One of the major obstacles that must be overcome in the design of effective lentiviral vaccines is the ability of lentiviruses to evolve in order to escape from neutralizing antibodies. The primary target for neutralizing antibodies is the highly variable viral envelope glycoprotein (Env), a glycoprotein that is essential for viral entry and comprises both variable and conserved regions. As a r...

Feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) is a T-lymphotropic retrovirus associated with immunodeficiency and opportunistic infections in cats. The discovery of FIV provides an opportunity for the development of a small animal model for AIDS. To initiate the molecular and biological characterization of FIV, cDNA clones were synthesized and used to isolate a proviral clone of FIV. Molecular cross-hybr...

Upper respiratory tract diseases (URTD) are common clinical problem in cats worldwide. Feline calicivirus (FCV) and feline herpesvirus type 1 (FHV-1) are the main primary pathogens. Feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) and Feline leukemia virus (FeLV) are also among the most common infectious diseases of cats which suppress the immunity. Oropharyngeal and conjunctival swabs and blood samples wer...

Studies were done on 53 cats with community-acquired infection with the feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) to determine if hematologic abnormalities were comparable with those observed in patients seropositive for the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Nine cats were asymptomatic, 24 had clinical symptoms equivalent to AIDS-related complex (ARC), and 20 had AIDS-like disease. Hematologic abno...

The feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) is a retrovirus of the Lentivirus genus that was initially isolated from a colony of domestic cats in California in 1986 and has now been recognized as a common feline pathogen worldwide. To date, there is only one recent serology-based report on FIV in mainland China which was published in 2016. We designed this study to investigate the molecular prevale...

The peptidase of the HIV type 1 (HIV PR) is required for the replication of and further infection by the virus. A concerted effort has taken place in the past 15 years to understand the properties of this enzyme, as it serves as an excellent drug target for control of the virus. Owing to drug pressure, many mutations arise during turnover of the virus and some of these lead to resistance to the...

Domestic cats endure infections by all three subfamilies of the retroviridae: lentiviruses (feline immunodeficiency virus [FIV]), gammaretroviruses (feline leukemia virus [FeLV]), and spumaretroviruses (feline foamy virus [FFV]). Thus, cats present an insight into the evolution of the host-retrovirus relationship and the development of intrinsic/innate immune mechanisms. Tetherin (BST-2) is an ...

Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 Rev export depends upon the presence of the nuclear export signal (NES), a leucine-rich stretch of hydrophobic amino acids. Recently, the nuclear NES-binding receptor has been identified as CRM1 or exportin 1. Rev export has been shown to be CRM1 dependent. The function of the atypical NES-containing Rev-like proteins of equine infectious anemia virus (EIAV) ...

Cheetah populations are diminishing rapidly in their natural habitat. One reason for their decline is thought to be a high susceptibility to (infectious) diseases because cheetahs in zoos suffer from high disease-induced mortality. Data on the health status of free-ranging cheetahs are scarce, and little is known about their exposure and susceptibility to infectious diseases. We determined sero...