Believe it or not, some lucky people are naturally resistant to HIV. These individuals lack thirty-two letters of DNA in the gene for a protein called CCR5, which is located on the surface of white blood cells—those cells that form the bedrock of the body’s immune system. CCR5 proteins are one of the parts of the cell’s surface that the HIV virus latches onto in the initial stage of its invasion. This specific, thirty-two-letter deletion causes the CCR5 protein to be truncated and prevents it from making its way to the cell surface. Without CCR5 proteins to attach to, HIV molecules can’t
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