Question

Assembly of new virions in HIV, influenza and SARS-CoV-2?

In HIV explain how it uses HIV protease?

Answer 1

HIV-1 protease is a retroviral aspartyl protease (retropepsin), an enzyme involved with peptide bond hydrolysis in retroviruses, that is essential for the life-cycle of HIV, the retrovirus that causes AIDS. HIV-1 PR serves a dual purpose. Precursor HIV-1 protease is responsible for catalyzing its own production into mature enzymes via protease auto-processing. Mature protease is able to hydrolyze peptide bonds on the Gag-Pol polyproteins at nine specific sites, processing the resulting subunits into mature, fully functional proteins. These cleaved proteins, including reverse transcriptase, integrase, and RNaseH, are encoded by the coding region components necessary for viral replication. Without effective HIV protease, HIV virions remain uninfectious.