Azedothymidine is a drug which is used to treat HIV. The drug contains an active compound called Zidovudine 5- triphosphate which has greater attraction for reverse transcriptase enzyme. And retroviruses like HIV uses this enzyme reverse transcriptase in order to replicate their single stranded RNA into the dsDNA. Also, Zidovudine 5-triohosphate at its 3' position contain nitrogen group instead of hydroxyl group. The DNA synthesis and the replication is terminated because the reverse transcriptase enzyme will incorporate this compound Zidovudine 5- phosphate into proviral DNA of HIV and the subsequent nucleosides will not be able to bind to the Zidovudine 5- phosphate nitrogen group.
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