Prof. Olivier Mauffret of ENS-Cachan in France and leader of UMR 8113 Project-Team on Structure and Interaction of Nucleic Acid, French Academy of Sciences gave an academic lecture titled “Structure and dynamic characteristics of nucleic acid fragment in the process of HIV virus reverse transcription” in the afternoon March 25 in the Science Building.
In the lecture, Prof. Mauffret introduced his recent research on structure and dynamic characteristics of DNA stem-loop element cTAR via experimental methods of NMR, chemistry and nucleic acids probes etc. HIV-1 viral genome synthesizes double-stranded DNA from single-stranded DNA template through a complex reverse transcription process, with first strand transfer as the first step, neo-synthesized DNA (also called intrinsic terminator DNA) transfers from 5’s ends to 3’ends of the genome. The process depends on stem-loop structure of DNA and RNA and is catalyzed by reverse transcriptase NCp7. Prof. MAUFFRET found in his research that DNA stem-loop element is very unstable, however it is not true for RNA. He explained the significance of this finding to HIV-1 first strand transfer.
More than 30 graduate students from School of Life Science attended the lecture and had an in-depth discussion with Pref. Mauffret, who were brought closer to the frontier in the study of HIV-1 virus reverse transcription.
