Function
The gene's protein product allows fragments of HIV mRNA that contain a Rev Response Element (RRE) to be exported from the nucleus to the cytoplasm.
In the absence of the rev gene, the host RNA splicing machinery in the nucleus quickly splices the RNA so that only the regulatory proteins Rev and Tat and the accessory protein Nef can be produced. In the presence of rev, RNA is exported from the nucleus before it can be spliced, so that the structural proteins and RNA genome can be produced. This mechanism allows a positive feedback loop to allow HIV to overwhelm the host's defenses, and provides time-dependent regulation of replication.
Read more about this topic: Rev (HIV)
Famous quotes containing the word function:
“Every boy was supposed to come into the world equipped with a father whose prime function was to be our father and show us how to be men. He can escape us, but we can never escape him. Present or absent, dead or alive, real or imagined, our father is the main man in our masculinity.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“As a medium of exchange,... worrying regulates intimacy, and it is often an appropriate response to ordinary demands that begin to feel excessive. But from a modernized Freudian view, worrying—as a reflex response to demand—never puts the self or the objects of its interest into question, and that is precisely its function in psychic life. It domesticates self-doubt.”
—Adam Phillips, British child psychoanalyst. “Worrying and Its Discontents,” in On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored, p. 58, Harvard University Press (1993)
“Literature does not exist in a vacuum. Writers as such have a definite social function exactly proportional to their ability as writers. This is their main use.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)