How do protease inhibitors disrupt the life cycle of the HIV virus?

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Accepted Answer

All right. Hello everyone. So this question says true or false protease inhibitors prevent the maturation of viral particles in HIV by inhibiting a key viral enzyme. OK. So first and foremost, what is a protease? Well, recall that a protease is used to describe an enzyme that cleaves proteins, that's its main function. So now how does this apply to the HIV virus? Well, recall first and foremost that in HIV, the virus itself creates what are known as polyp proteins. And so these polyp proteins reach maturity into the functional proteins through cleavage and that cleavage is done via the protease enzyme. So without the protease enzyme, these polyp proteins cannot become the mature viral protein. And so it makes sense to say that if protease is inhibited, the cleavage of polyp proteins is also inhibited, which means that the polyp proteins cannot then form mature viral particles. So here the statement given is actually true, right? Because protease inhibitors prevent the maturation of viral particles by inhibiting that cleavage reaction via the protease enzyme. The statement is correct and there you have it. So with that being said, thank you so very much for watching and I hope you found this helpful.

How do protease inhibitors disrupt the life cycle of the HIV virus?

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Key Concepts

HIV Life Cycle

Protease Inhibitors

Antiretroviral Therapy (ART)