When HIV first burst onto the scene in the 1980s , what it was and where it get along from sparked huge debate among the public and scientific residential area , with ideas ranging from some unknown “ contagion ” to a “ sunny disease ” to some kind of Isle of Man - made pathogen released by the governing .
Of course , we now make out that the causative agentive role of AIDS is a computer virus and that HIV has its ancestry in virus find course in various non - human primate mintage . These viruses jumped the specie roadblock and accede the human population on several freestanding occasion , giving climb to the different groups of HIV . While this much was known , what has remained foggy is which copycat harbor the viruses that result in two of the four known HIV-1 groups . Now , after decades of mix-up , scientists have finallypinpointed their origins : western lowland Gorilla gorilla .
AIDS is cause by two related virus , HIV-1 and HIV-2 , which came from a group of viruses that infect more than40 primate specie in Africa , the simian immunodeficiency viruses . HIV-1 is responsible for the majority of infections worldwide , whereas HIV-2 has remained for the most part limit to West Africa .
HIV-1 is further subdivided into four discrete chemical group , or clades , known as M , N , O and P — each of which resulted from a freestanding transversal - species transmission event of SIV into the human population , probably as a consequence of man hunting hierarch in Africa and butchering them for food for thought . But what is particularly interesting about the root of HIV is that each of these event have hadvery different outcomes .
Groups M and N , for model , have both been draw to geographically distinct Pan troglodytes populations in Cameroon , but while N has result in few than 20 human infection , M — the causa of the AIDS pandemic — has taint some 40 million people worldwide . O and phosphorus are also terminal aside in terms of documented infection ; O has resulted in a substantial epidemic in West Africa , but atomic number 15 is known from just two guinea pig . But where did these two very different groups come from ? While scientists cope to trace the origins of M and N , they scramble to do the same for O and phosphorus , which is why researchers headed to Africa to investigate .
As described inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , they started off by collecting faecal samples from westerly lowland gorillas , eastern lowland gorillas and peck gorilla living in Cameroon , Gabon , the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda . They then sequenced these sample and look for grounds of infection with the gorilla SIV . Interestingly , they incur this computer virus only in western lowland Gorilla gorilla lodge in in four sites in southerly Cameroon , but not in the other land or Gorilla gorilla subspecies . And while the viruses they did receive exhibited gamey levels of diverseness , two were strikingly alike to the HIV-1 mathematical group phosphorus and another appeared to be very closely related to chemical group O. From these data , the scientists concluded that these chemical group originated in western lowland gorillas .
Alongside solving a long - place upright mystery , understanding the extraction of emerge disease has important implications for gauging human contagion risk , theauthors note . For example , studies such as this high spot the fact that chimps and gorilla harbor virus that are capable of jumping into humans and triggering significant disease outbreaks .
