HIVcleave: a web-server for predicting human immunodeficiency virus protease cleavage sites in proteins

According to the ''distorted key theory'' [K.C. Chou, Analytical Biochemistry, 233 (1996) 1-14], the information of cleavage sites of proteins by HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) protease is very useful for finding effective inhibitors against HIV, the culprit of AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome). To meet the increasing need in this regard, a web-server called HIVcleave was established at http://chou.med.harvard.edu/bioinf/HIV/. In this note we provide a step-to-step guide for how to use HIVcleave to identify the cleavage sites of a query protein sequence by HIV-1 and HIV-2 proteases, respectively.