Talk:Key HIV gene discovered

I just saw a comment from an IP address user editing this page if the pagename could be changed. So I did. But perhaps better name exists for this page, and in that case please "move" the page. You can move a page from here:

You need to log on to use that feature. And if you don't have one, you need to create an account. All you need is a username and a password. Tomos 03:45, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

An English language source would be helpful!

- Below are some English sources. However they mention the research site as National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and not CONICET. I wonder if there was some joint research done? There's also supposed to be an article in Science
 * ABC News Australia
 * Earthtimes.org
 * Google News cluster

User IP comment (moved from article)
The study does not seem to mention that HIV itself has never been isolated, or proven to exist.


 * The same is also true of subatomic particles, photons, and the mechanisms of electricity, all of which you are using to make your comment. Please discuss articles on the talk page, and not in the body of the article itself. - Amgine 05:21, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Subatomic particles and photons have an overwhelming body of experimental evidence that supports their physical existence; the mechanisms of electricity are well understood and have been modeled in exquisite detail, check that your computer is working for additional evidence :> Onymous 81.217.21.244 10:24, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Check that people are dying of HIV/AIDS, Onymous. There is actually more research done on HIV, at the moment, than there has been on the physics of particles, photons, and electrons, surprising as that may be for you. In the 20 years of its research history HIV has revolutionized medicine twice, and created entire branches of biological and health research. And at least two specific virii have been isolated/proven to exist; probably more as I'm only on far periphery of that field. - Amgine

I added some English sources and tried to sort out where the research was done. I'm a little unsure on who the "first author" on the study is. Obviously, the first author listed in the Science Express article is Gonzalez, but the CONICET press release says that the study was written by Ahuja (I think-- my Spanish is weak at best), who is the last author. Ahuja's lab's press release refers to him as the "senior co-author," and somewebsites seem to agree. Any good ideas? Is the study's leader usually listed last? Pingswept 22:06, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Primary Investigators (PI) are the "big names" who sign the grant, and are responsible for it being accomplished. The First Author collates the research and makes the first draft of the paper, so they do the heavy work of writing and are often responsible for balancing the edits of the other researchers to turn out the other drafts as well. The PI may just be a name, or may have developed the idea for the research, written the funding grants, built the research team, conducted the research, written the paper, or may have shared these responsibilities equally, or simply been an administrator. Last Author is often a position of prestige; they may have had little to do with the actual research, but much to do with developing the methodology used, the research facility, or did the initial research which the article is analysing. The article may also be a sub-project of their over-arching grant or research facility, thus they have input but may not be directly administering this specific element.
 * But that is in research institutions in the U.S.A. Other settings may have different norms. For example, in the U.S. research grants pay for the university researcher's time; in Canada the researcher is expected to donate their time to the grant, while still fulfilling their academic responsibilities. Thus in Canada many researchers merely administrate their grants with others doing much of the hands-on work, simply because they don't have the time to do everything themselves. (This seems to be a more common academic model world-wide, in my limited experience.) - Amgine 07:16, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Importance of this discovery
The headline of this story should probably be changed. The importance of this study is the finding of correlation between different genetic profiles and immunity to HIV -- or probably more accurately expressed as "susceptibility to" HIV. A subsidiary finding that is quite important for the use of genetic profiling in preventive and diagnositic medicine more broadly is that the profiles differed by ethnic group -- not that one group was more immune than another, but that the profile that correlated with immunity was different. So different measurements would need to be applied to determine likelihood of immunity depending on ethnicity.

Here's the Reuters writeup. The study is available via Science magazine on their Science Express.