Some of the Drugs Used to Treat HIV Patients Are

Multiple Choice

Some of the drugs used to treat HIV patients are competitive inhibitors of the HIV reverse transcriptase enzyme. Unfortunately, the high mutation rate of HIV means that the virus rapidly acquires mutations with amino acid changes that make them resistant to these competitive inhibitors. Where in the reverse transcriptase enzyme would such amino acid changes most likely occur in drug-resistant viruses?

A) in or near the active site
B) at an allosteric site
C) at a cofactor binding site
D) in regions of the protein that determine packaging into the virus capsid
E) Such mutations could occur anywhere with equal probability.