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Congratulations to the Swanstrom lab that published an article titled “A fitness bottleneck in HIV-1 transmission” in the July 11, 2014 issue of Science.

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Ron Swanstrom, PhD
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Sarah Joseph, PhD

In the July 11 issue of Science (345:136-137, 2014) Drs. Sarah Joseph and Ronald Swanstrom published a Perspective previewing a paper in that issue by Carlson et al. The Perspective introduced the idea that there is selective pressure on HIV-1 immediately after transmission such that less fit viruses are lost in the transmitted virus population. There has been intense interest for a number of years about the properties of the transmitted virus. The Carlson et al. work shows that transmitted viruses are on average more fit but that under some circumstances transmission occurs more easily and this is reflected in the transmission of viruses with a wider range of fitness.

Dr. Joseph is a senior researcher in Dr. Swanstrom’s laboratory and together they are interested in properties of the transmitted virus and also HIV-1 compartmentalization within the body which can lead to novel pathways of pathogenesis and disease.

Dr. Swanstrom has studied HIV-1 for nearly 30 years and is a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics as well as Director of the UNC Center For AIDS Research. Swanstrom’s laboratory focuses on three lines of HIV-1 research: evolution of HIV-1 as the result of virus-host interactions, the nature of drug resistance to HIV-1 protease inhibitor, and HIV-1 vaccine development.

Link to article: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/345/6193/136.full

Swanstrom Lab