Preparing for my midterm this week and also working on my final project I’ve been fascinated by how much biochemical interactions both covalent and non covalent are at the heart of life and how disease can arise when bacteria and virus take advantage of the same. Some viruses infect cells by first binding to receptors on cells which they recognize based the interactions they form. I was pleased to learn in our exam though that preventing some of these interactions, covalent in this case, can have life saving effects like preventing HIV DNA replication in AIDS patients!
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Just as a side note, we were talking about AZT (the HIV drug) in my evolution class. Apparently HIV tends to develop resistance to AZT through modifications in the structure of the polymerase tail, which allows it to recognize the lack of a 3′ hydroxyl group. However, this slows down the rate of transcription, so in the absence of AZT the HIV population will tend to favor wild type polymerase again.