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Harvard Medical School

MICROBIOLOGY: Findings Recommend Herpes Vaccine for Human Trials
A herpes vaccine developed at HMS outperformed two other vaccines in two animal models and is a strong candidate for human trials, according to a study conducted at the National Institutes of Health. The findings, published in the January Journal of Virology, compared three different experimental vaccines for herpes simplex virus 2 (HSV-2), the virus that causes most cases of genital herpes. A vaccine developed by HMS’s David Knipe was more protective than the other therapies, one of which has already been tested in humans.

IMMUNOLOGY: Genetic Battleground Marked Between HIV and Host
A study in the Dec. 9 Nature provides evidence that a specific genetic region—the human leukocyte antigen B (HLA-B) class I gene—plays a dominant role in shaping the body’s response to HIV infection. The study, led by Philip Goulder and conducted by a multi-institutional team in the United States, the United Kingdom, and South Africa, shows that slight differences in HLA-B proteins can noticeably influence disease outcome.

BIOLOGICAL CHEMISTRY: Disparate Proteins Structurally Identical
Though they lack any primary sequence similarity, SCAN domains from certain mammalian transcription factors and the C-terminal ends of retroviral capsid proteins appear to be structurally identical. This surprising relationship was uncovered when Gerhard Wagner (on right), Tucker Collins, and colleagues solved the three-dimensional structure of the SCAN dimer from the mammalian protein ZNF174. The likeness suggests that these capsid proteins, including those from HIV, may establish dimers in a totally unexpected way. Like the ZNF174 peptides, they may form a domain-swapped dimer, in which a helical hairpin from one monomer is inserted into the body of the other and vice versa. This structure would explain some heretofore puzzling properties of the capsid proteins. The findings are published in the Jan. 7 Molecular Cell.

NEUROSCIENCE: Brain Region Senses Setbacks, Redirects Action
When people sense that something they were doing is no longer productive and it’s time to try something new, they likely can thank a region of the brain called the cingulate. The first direct human evidence of the cingulate’s role in perceiving setbacks so other parts of the brain can devise adaptive strategies appears in the December Nature Neuroscience. The study was conducted by Emad Eskandar and fellow neurosurgeons and psychiatrists at HMS.