ABSTRACT
High amounts of secondary metabolites produced by microorganisms, plants, and marine organisms have been of much attention as bioactive substances for disease treatment (Lam 2007). Among these diseases, acquired immunodeciency syndrome (AIDS) stands as one of the most important diseases which needs urgent consideration worldwide with about 33.2 million people infected by human immunodeciency virus type 1 (HIV-1) (UNAIDS 2010). HIV is a member of the lentivirus family for being an enveloped retrovirus. The structure of HIV is relatively complex with each virus expressing 160 kDa glycoproteins composed of gp120 and gp41 which are linked together by non-covalent bonds. The gp41 molecule is a transmembrane glycoprotein that crosses the membrane of the viral envelope. Infection of the host cell by HIV entrance occurs through the interaction of viral envelope protein, gp120, with a specic membrane glycoprotein called CD4 along a chemokine receptor (Kwong et al. 1998). Host cell membrane forms the viral envelope during infection process and within the envelope, viral core (nucleocapsid) that includes a layer of protein called p17, and an inner layer of protein called p24 is located. The HIV genome is composed of two identical single-stranded RNA (+), and some proteins are attached to the genome such as two molecules of reverse transcriptase, a protease, and an integrase.
