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AIDS diagnostics
HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus, is the causative agent of AIDS. Most infected individuals show specific antibodies against the structural proteins of HIV, and these antibodies appear early after infection. The first diagnostic HIV tests involved growing the whole, inactivated virus in tissue culture. This was an expensive and not risk-free method. The company Roche developed tests employing the relevant antigenic proteins of the virus. These proteins are expressed and produced in large quantities in the bacterium Escherichia coli, thereby avoiding the handling of infectious virus and increasing product purity.