Journal of Molecular Biology Image

Image created​ by Alan Hoofring of NIH Medical Arts supports a research article describing that HIV integrase assembles multiple species of intasomes, all of which have the same core structure. The major species is dodecameric (top), with less abundant hexadecameric (middle) and tetrameric (bottom) intasome species. All intasome species contain the same set of highlighted integrase domains (the conserved intasome core) around the viral DNA (omitted for clarity) as in the tetrameric intasomes and are similarly active for DNA integration. Artwork was created with Autodesk 3ds Max and Adobe Photoshop.​