HIV vaccine possibility after scientists rebuild camouflage mechanism - Times Online
One thing that I love about synthetic biology is the diversity of topics and applications that are covered by the term. Here, chemists are synthesizing variants of the sugars that allow HIV to evade attack by the immune system. The variations allow the immune system to recognize the sugars more readily and induce an attack on the virus, conferring immunity (decreasing the chance of infection after exposure by one third, so a lot more work needs to be done to get that percentage higher). Ten years ago, this would be organic chemistry, now it’s synthetic biology!
