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Cover caption:

Front cover illustration: Human immunodeficiency virus type 2 (HIV-2) is likely to have originated from zoonotic transmission of simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) of sooty mangabeys (SIVsm). Indeed there is geographical overlap between the range of sooty mangabeys and the epicentre of HIV-2 infection in West Africa. A striking feature of many HIV-2 isolates is their ability to infect cells CD4 independently via CCR5 or CXCR4 coreceptors. This may reflect an 'open' envelope structure with an exposed coreceptor-binding site. A predicted HIV-2 coreceptor-binding site, located between the V1/V2 (red) and V3 (orange) loop stems, is depicted (in cyan) on a space-filling model of an HIV-2 gp120 core. This structure was predicted by SWISSPROT, based upon existing HIV-1 gp120 core crystal structures (pdb accession codes 1GC1, 1G9N and 1GM9) and rendered with RASMOL, version 2.7.1. Image credits: Mark Murchison, Katherine Phillippi-Falkenstein and Ron Veazey for the sooty mangabey image taken at the Tulane National Primate Research Center, LA, USA; Jacqueline Reeves, Mark Biscone and Robert Doms for the schematic and space-filling model. See the article by J. Reeves and R. Doms on pages 1253-1265 of this issue.

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