Summary: Viruses lurk in the grey area between the living and the nonliving, according to scientists. Like living things, they replicate but they don't do it on their own. Viruses needs a host cell. And through infection, they hijack it and force it to make copies of itself. Supercomputer simulations have helped uncover the mechanism for how the HIV-1 virus imports into its core the nucleotides it needs to fuel DNA synthesis, a key step in its replication. It's the first example found where a virus performs an activity such as recruiting small molecules from a cellular environment into its core to conduct a process beneficial for its life cycle. The simulation work was supported by XSEDE, the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment funded by the National Science Foundation. And it was carried out on the Stampede2 system here at the Texas Advanced Computing Center, as well as on the Bridges system at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center. XSEDE awarded supercomputing access and expertise to biophysical chemist Juan R. Perilla and his lab at the University of Delaware. Chaoyi Xu, a graduate student in the Perilla Lab, was the lead author on the HIV viral capsid work, published with Perilla and other scientists December 2020 in PLOS Biology. Xu and Perilla join host Jorge Salazar on the Supersized Science podcast to talk about their research.
