• L5: Timing the Origin of the HIV-1 Pandemic (Authored by B. Korber, M. Muldoon, J. Theiler, F. Gao, A. Lapedes, R. Gupta, B. Hahn, S. Wolinsky, T. Bhattachrya. Los Alamos Natl. Lab., NM; Univ. of Manchester Inst. of Technology, UK; Univ. of Alabama, Birmingham and Northwestern Univ., Chicago, IL)
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Scientists and statisticians at the Los Alamos National Laboratory used NIRVANA, the world's fastest supercomputer, and multiple elegant mathematical modeling techniques to calculate the date of the introduction of HIV into the human species from chimpanzees and/or monkeys.

The group analyzed the genetic sequences from viral samples with known dates as early as 1959, and calculated the mutation rate of the virus in order to back-calculate its divergence from a common ancestor. Through incorporation of maximum likelihood methods with molecular clock models, the most likely time of emergence was approximately 1930, with a range as early as 1910. The ancestral virus was named "Eve."

Korber commented that her findings make it extremely unlikely to be true that the species-jump occurred as a contamination of oral polio vaccine which was administered in 1957-59, as alleged by Edward Hooper in his book The River. This theory would require the simultaneous introduction of ten different HIV strains from ten different chimps and is not likely to have happened.

Korber feels these techniques may have application in vaccine and drug design for HIV, and in better handling other epidemics in the future.