导致人类艾滋病的HIV-1病毒具有高度的遗传变异性，可以突变而躲过免疫系统的追杀。而病毒的这种能力使得疫苗的制造变得很困难。现在David Nickle等人发表了一种有效的运算方法，这种方法可以让研究人员研发出能对付HIV和其它病原的多样化疫苗。
这种计算机运算方法可以藉由刺激对HIV产生免疫反应的分子，以分析在病毒株中发现的变异。这些抗原将许多病毒株中发现的变异，压缩到适合疫苗免疫原的基因长度。Nike表示，他们已经能够将Nef蛋白中发生的62％的变异和Gag蛋白中81％的变异压缩成三个基因长度的免疫原。
这些短的免疫原将可用于疫苗研制，因为它们能够反映HIV-1株中的多样化特征。这些免疫原应该能够引发常见病毒株，以及大部分病毒突变形式造成的免疫反应。
（编译/姜欣慧） (资料来源 : biocompare)
英文原文：
Vaccine To Cope With Viral Diversity In HIV
4/26/2007
The ability of HIV-1 to develop high levels of genetic diversity and acquire mutations to escape immune pressures contributes to our difficulties in producing a vaccine. David Nickle et al present here an efficient algorithm to develop vaccines that cope with the diversity of HIV or other variable pathogens.
This computational method clarifies and analyzes the variation found in the strains of the virus by describing the molecules which stimulate the immune response to HIV (immunogens) that have multiple forms of variable elements of the virus. These antigens compress the variation found in many viral strains into lengths suitable for vaccine immunogens. "We can capture 62% of the variation found in the Nef protein and 81% of the variation in the Gag protein into immunogens of three gene lengths", says Nickle.
These short-length immunogens are potentially useable in a vaccine, as they reflect the diversity of features in HIV-1 strains. These immunogens should elicit immune responses against high frequency viral strains as well as against most mutant forms of the virus.
