Los Alamos, NM (AHN) – Researchers are using the Roadrunner supercomputer to analyze vast quantities of genetic sequences from HIV infected people in the hope of zeroing in on possible vaccine target areas.

It is the hope of scientists that Physicist Tanmoy Bhattacharya and HIV researcher Bette Korber used samples across the globe – from both chronic and acute HIV patients – and created an evolutionary genetic family tree, known as a phylogenetic tree, to look for similarities in the acute versus chronic sequences that may identify areas where vaccines would be most effective.

During this study researchers were able to analyze and compare the evolutionary history of more than 10,000 sequences from more than 400 HIV-infected individuals. Korber and his colleagues are hoping to identify common features of the transmitted virus, and attempt to create a vaccine that enables recognition of the original transmitted virus before the body’s immune response causes the virus to react and mutate.

“DNA Sequencing technology, however, is currently being revolutionized, and we are at the cusp of being able to obtain more than 100,000 viral sequences from a single person,” said Korber. “For this new kind data to be useful, computational advances will have to keep pace with the experimental, and the current study begins to move us into this new era.”

The supercomputer gives researchers the capacity to look for similarities across whole populations of acute patients.

Bhattacharya continues, “At this scale we can begin to figure out the relationships between chronic and acute infections using statistics to determine the interconnecting branches – and it is these interconnections where a specially-designed vaccine might be most effective.

The IBM designed Roadrunner supercomputer is capable of performing 1 million billion calculations per second.

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The Indonesian State of Papua is preparing to pass a new law that will require some HIV/AIDS patients to be implanted with RFID chips.

Under the proposal, patients who had shown “actively sexual behavior” could be implanted with the RFID chip to monitor their activity.

Lawmaker John Manangsang told Reuters: “It’s a simple technology. A signal from the microchip will track their movements and this will be received by monitoring authorities.” If a patient with HIV/AIDS was found to have infected a healthy person, there would be a penalty.

The Jakarta Post newspaper the head of Papua’s National AIDS Commission as saying the plan violated human rights. The Indonesian Government claims that the number of HIV/AIDS cases in Papua is 20 times the national average.

I have to agree with Gizmodo on this: “I wonder if his plan B is just putting them in camps or shoot them straight away.”

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