The mechanism of retroviral integration from X-ray structures of its key intermediates

Retroviruses such as HIV need to insert their genome into the host genome in order to replicate. This process is mediated by a tetramer of the virus-encoded integrase protein. Earlier this year, Peter Cherepanov and colleagues reported the structure of a related integrase from prototype foamy virus bound to the cleaved viral DNA ends, a complex known as the intasome. Now they have solved the structure of the intasome interacting with the target...