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The HIV-like virus that infects monkeys is at least 100,000 if not millions of years old, scientists reported this week at a meeting of the New York Academy of Sciences. The vast age of the monkey virus, which does not cause illness in most of its hosts, suggests that it may take a long time for HIV to become equally benign in humans.
"Don't expect human evolution to unfold in a timeframe that will do anything good for us," Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson, told meeting attendees. "We're not going to evolve adaptations that will mitigate this virus in any acceptable timescale, so we need other solutions."
Most researchers agree that the pandemic strain of HIV that currently infects more than 33 million people worldwide started in central Africa around 100 years ago, when hunters contracted the virus through tainted bushmeat. But the age of HIV's primate ancestor ? simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) ? remains hotly contested. Using DNA sequence data taken from SIV strains, some have estimated that SIV is a few thousand years old1, whereas others suggest that the virus dates back only a couple of hundred years2.
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"Don't expect human evolution to unfold in a timeframe that will do anything good for us," Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson, told meeting attendees. "We're not going to evolve adaptations that will mitigate this virus in any acceptable timescale, so we need other solutions."
Most researchers agree that the pandemic strain of HIV that currently infects more than 33 million people worldwide started in central Africa around 100 years ago, when hunters contracted the virus through tainted bushmeat. But the age of HIV's primate ancestor ? simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) ? remains hotly contested. Using DNA sequence data taken from SIV strains, some have estimated that SIV is a few thousand years old1, whereas others suggest that the virus dates back only a couple of hundred years2.
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