Title

Molecular Epigenetics, Chromatin, and NeuroAIDS/HIV: Translational Implications

Authors

Paul Shapshak^1, *, Francesco Chiappelli², Deborah Commins³, Elyse Singer⁴, Andrew J. Levine⁴, Charurut Somboonwit⁵, Alireza Minagar⁶ and Andras J. Pellionisz⁷

Affiliation

¹Division of Infectious Diseases and International Medicine, Departments of Internal Medicine and of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine, University of South Florida Health, Tampa, FL 33606; ²Division of Oral Biology and Medicine, UCLA School of Dentistry, Los Angeles, CA 90095; ³Department of Pathology, University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA 90089; ⁴Department of Neurology and National Neurological AIDS Bank, UCLA School of Medicine, Westwood, CA 90025; ⁵Division of Infectious Diseases and International Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, University of South Florida, College of Medicine, Tampa, FL 33606; ⁶Department of Neurology, Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, 1501 Kings Highway, Shreveport, LA 71130; ⁷Helixometry, 935 Rosette Court, Sunnyvale, CA 94086;

Email

pshapshak@gmail.com; *Corresponding Author

Phone

813-844-8903

Fax

813-844-8013

Article Type

Current Trends

Date

received August 28, 2008; accepted September 13, 2008; published October 07, 2008

Abstract

We describe current research that applies epigenetics to a novel understanding of the immuno-neuropathogenesis of HIV-1 viral infection and NeuroAIDS. We propose the hypothesis that HIV-1 alters the structure-function relationship of chromatin, coding DNA and non-coding DNA, including RNA transcribed from these regions resulting in pathogenesis in AIDS, drug abuse, and NeuroAIDS. We discuss the general implications of molecular epigenetics with special emphasis on drug abuse, bar-codes, pyknons, and miRNAs for translational and clinical research. We discuss the application of the recent recursive algorithm of biology to this field and propose to synthesize the Genomic and Epigenomic views into a holistic approach of Holo-Genomics.

Keywords

epigenetics; hologenomics; coding and noncoding DNA; HIV-1; AIDS; NeuroAIDS; molecular medicine paradigm-shift; translation-clinic

Citation

Shapshak et al., Bioinformation 3(1): 53-57 (2008)

Edited by

P. Kangueane

ISSN

0973-2063

Publisher

Biomedical Informatics

License

This is an Open Access article which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.