HIVToolbox is an internet application that helps scientists identify and develop new hypotheses as well as facilitate interpretation of experiments, with the goal of helping scientists better understand

HIV The human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV) are two species of '' Lentivirus'' (a subgroup of retrovirus) that infect humans. Over time, they cause acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), a condition in which progressive failure of the im ...

, the virus that causes

AIDS The HIV, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a retrovirus that attacks the immune system. Without treatment, it can lead to a spectrum of conditions including acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). It is a Preventive healthcare, pr ...

, and to identify new potential drug targets. The information about HIV includes the different parts of the HIV proteins, often referred to as domains. Smaller regions of the proteins called minimotifs are also present in HIV proteins. These minimotifs, also called

short linear motifs Short may refer to: Places * Short (crater), a lunar impact crater on the near side of the Moon * Short, Mississippi, an unincorporated community * Short, Oklahoma, a census-designated place People * Short (surname) * List of people known a ...

encode different molecular functions in HIV proteins. HIVtoolbox is an internet application that runs off of a

MySQL MySQL () is an Open-source software, open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A rel ...

database designed to integrate HIV data for protein sequences derived from many different isolates,

protein structure Protein structure is the three-dimensional arrangement of atoms in an amino acid-chain molecule. Proteins are polymers specifically polypeptides formed from sequences of amino acids, which are the monomers of the polymer. A single amino acid ...

s, protein domains, protein-protein interactions, functional elements in proteins, and known and predicted minimotifs from the Minimotif Miner database. Other amino acids involved in molecular functions such as catalysis, dimerization, etc. are also included. The database for the program also contains calculated amino acid conservation for all HIV proteins. This helps to identify regions of the virus that do not change, thus are thought to represent important regions. The 2nd release of HIVToolbox, HIVToolbox2 also contains information about the locations on the proteins where different HIV drugs bind, and their spatial relationship to the mutations that arise in HIV and render the virus resistant to the drug.

References

{{Reflist HIV/AIDS Web applications