HIV-1 ancestry primordial expansions of RRE and RRE related sequences

The human T-lymphotropic retroviruses HTLV-I and HIV-1/-2 share a complementary patchwork homology in which the RRE regions of HIV-1 and -2 cover 78.1% of a 169 nucleotide (nt) region (PX1,2) positioned precisely between open reading frames PX I and PX II of ATLV (HTLV-I). The sequence character of the PX1,2 region is shown to be influenced by a primordial expansion, CTC2T, originating several hundred nucleotides upstream. A second primordial expansion, AGCU(U/C), is identified and shown to represent 52.1% of the HIV-1 RRE region. It is argued that prior to the present AIDS pandemic the efficiency of the rev receptor was enhanced by an ancestral recombination event.