Current approaches to HIV prevention, treatment and care.

Acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) was first labelled as a new illness in 1981; it took two more years to discover a causative virus, which was named human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in 1985. Nurses who practised during those times may recall the fear, panic, stigma, ethical dilemmas and refusals to care that were associated with the pandemic. Four decades later, HIV can be considered a long-term condition rather than a life-limiting disease, as a result of developments in treatment.

Site-specific recombinatorics: in situ cellular barcoding with the Cre Lox system.

Background: Cellular barcoding is a recently developed biotechnology tool that enables the familial identification of progeny of individual cells in vivo. In immunology, it has been used to track the burst-sizes of multiple distinct responding T cells over several adaptive immune responses. In the study of hematopoiesis, it revealed fate heterogeneity amongst phenotypically identical multipotent cells.