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Joan Stephenson, PhD

JAMA. 2000;283:1279.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

San Francisco—HIV-1 mostly likely first spread from chimpanzees to humans in the 1930s in Africa, scientists reported here at the Seventh Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections.

Using one of the world's most powerful supercomputers, a machine typically used to crunch numbers for physicists and astronomers, Bette Korber, PhD, and colleagues from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico analyzed a global database of the genetic sequences of variants of HIV-1. By applying mathematical modeling techniques used to study evolution on the molecular level, the team extrapolated from some 160 HIV variants to predict when such variants converged back to a common origin.

HIV has a rapid mutation rate, which explains both why so many viral variants exist and the speed with which the virus develops resistance to antiviral medications. Korber and colleagues studied the group M HIV-1 variants, which are responsible for the majority . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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