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Rejected Letter to Editor of Nature (1998) |
Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos (1) Valendar F.Turner (2) John M. Papadimitriou (3) Bruce Hedland-Thomas (1) Barry Page (1) David Causer (1)
(1) Department of Medical Physics, (2) Department of Emergency Medicine, Royal Perth Hospital, Perth, Western Australia; (3) Department of Pathology, University of Western Australia.
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Sir - The work on the structure of the "HIV gp120 envelope glycoprotein" by the groups of Sodroski and Hendrickson (Nature 393, 648-659; 705-710, 1998) was conducted in the belief that "The entry of HIV into host cells is mediated by the viral envelope glycoproteins, which are organized into oligomeric, probably trimeric spikes displayed on the surface of the virion". However, every single electron microscopy or immune electron microscopy study published to date on the HIV particles has shown that: "The outer lipid membrane was frequently broken or absent in places and there was no evidence of surface spikes".(1) Suffice to mention the work (undoubtedly the best so far published re HIV particles) by Hans Gelderblom and his colleagues from the Koch-Institute in Berlin. In 1985 they wrote: "When we looked closely at the ultrastructure of HTLV-III we noted that cell-released HTLV-III had lost most of its surface projections", spikes.
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