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Updated: Aug 2, 2026

Genotypic Inference of HIV-1 Tropism Using Population-based Sequencing of V3
Published on: December 27, 2010
Phylogenetic relationships between Puerto Rico and continental USA HIV-1 pol sequences: a shared HIV-1 infection
R J Noel1, S Chaudhary, N Rodriguez
1Department of Biochemistry, Ponce School of Medicine, PO Box 7004, Ponce, PR 00732, USA. rnoel@psm.edu
Abstract:
In order to investigate the existing notion that the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) infection in Puerto Rico (PR) was imported from the continental United States of America (USA) we sequenced and analyzed 900 bases of the HIV-1 pol sequence from individuals in PR for comparison with pol sequences from the USA mainland. The sequences were derived by direct sequencing of reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction products generated from plasma virus. The products were sequenced in both directions and the complementary strands were compared prior to analysis. These processed sequences and GenBank sequences from the continental USA were subjected to phylogenetic analyses. The PR and USA sequences did not form independent clusters, indicating a shared HIV-1 infection. This may be due to the continuous human traffic or, less likely, may indicate a similar evolution of a common source virus. Analysis of drug resistance mutations, fairly similar in frequency in the PR and USA sequences analyzed here, supports human traffic as a rationale for the common infection. This work indicates that an efficacious vaccine developed for use in the USA mainland will also be effective in prevention in PR and perhaps the other countries of the Caribbean region.
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