It took us 20 years to find where HIV

Finally, the authors of the paper note that transmission of SIVcpz could still be ongoing. "The bushmeat trade — the hunting and killing of chimpanzees and other endangered animals for human consumption — is a common practice in West-Central Africa and represents an ongoing risk for humans," says Hahn. "Subsistency hunting has always been a part of West-Central African culture, but increasing logging activities in the past decade have provided unprecedented access to remote forest regions and have led to the commercialized killing of thousands of chimpanzees, gorillas, and monkeys. It took us 20 years to find where HIV-1 came from, only to realize that the very animal species that harbors it is at the brink of extinction," says Hahn.

"We cannot afford to lose these animals, either from an animal conservation or a medical investigative standpoint," she says. "It is quite possible that the chimpanzee, which has served as the source of HIV-1, also holds the clues to its successful control." Hahn and her colleagues hope that as a consequence of their research, there will be additional measures taken to discourage chimpanzee poaching and to preserve this and other endangered primate species.

The team of scientists responsible for the AIDS discovery included UAB's Ya-Lu Chen, Cynthia Rodenburg and Scott Michael as well as Paul Sharp and Elizabeth Bailes from the University of Nottingham in England; David Robertson from the Laboratory of Structural and Genetic Information in Marseilles, France; Larry Cummins from the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research in Texas; Larry Arthur from the Frederick Cancer Research and Development Center in Frederick, Maryland; and Martine Peeters from the Laboratory of Retroviruses at ORSTOM in Montpellier, France.

The research was funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.