OBJECTIVETo study the diversity of HIV-1 tat gene in CNS and peripheral tissue of a patient with ADC and a patient with non-ADC, so as to research HIV evolution, the mechanism of CNS invasion and the pathogenesis of ADC.

METHODSThe tat gene was amplified with nested PCR from genomic DNA which was extracted from spleen and basal ganglia of one non-ADC patient with a wide range of cerebral artery atherosclerosis and one ADC patient. PCR products were cloned into the PGEM-T vector, after transformation and selection by ampicillin and blue/white spotting. Five of positive clones were sequenced. HIV-1 tat sequences were processed with BioEdit and MEGA4. With the softwares, neighbor-joining tree, p-distances, values of ds/dn, and analysis of amino acid motifs were all done, so as to research the diversity of HIV-1 tat gene in CNS and peripheral tissue.

RESULTSGene mutation of HIV-1 tat exist in the two patients, the mutation process of tat isolated from ADC patient suffered more compartmentalization than tat isolated from non-ADC patient, the differences of tat genes between CNS and peripheral tissue in ADC patient were greater than the non-ADC patient. Ds/dn showed that the virus gene mutation played a major role, the body intend to remove harmful non-synonymous mutations.

CONCLUSIONSThe compartmentation of tat gene in CNS and peripheral tissue of the two patients was different, the reason may be related to the pathway of HIV into the CNS, the relationship between HIV gene mutation in CNS and ADC still need more investigation.