Khan academy Bio passage HIV

[taeyeonlover]

For this question is GP120 better for vaccine than GP41 because 120 is more exposed?

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[aldol16]

No, it's because Gp120 is highly conserved in HIV. If you attack something that's not conserved, then there's a high likelihood that it'll mutate and the virus will just become resistant to your drug.

 

[taeyeonlover]

No, it's because Gp120 is highly conserved in HIV. If you attack something that's not conserved, then there's a high likelihood that it'll mutate and the virus will just become resistant to your drug.

What about gp41?


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[aldol16]

What about gp41?

Idk, it looks like we're missing the full passage. Nothing in what was posted says anything about Gp41 helping Gp120 attach to anything.

 

[GnomeBeGone]

Don't dwell on it. Whoever wrote this question is an idiot--vaccine science doesn't generalize well to HIV. In the context they gave you though, gp41 is wrong for the same reason as capsid --it's not exposed. In reality none of those answers are great.

gp41 could be targeted during the fusion step, but it's a difficult target since its exposure is transient. CCR5 you wouldn't want antibodies against because that's an autoimmune reaction.

Edit: Simplified version.