Abstract: HIV-1 variants containing amino acid substitutions within the coding region of HIV-1
reverse transcriptase (
RT), such as the 3'-azido-3'-deoxythymidine (AZT)-resistant variant AZT-R (
M41L/
D67N/
K70R/
T215Y/
K219Q) and a variant containing an insertion in the fingers domain (S69SGR70/
T215Y), are resistant to the nucleoside
RT inhibitor (
NRTI) AZT because of an increase in the level of excision of AZT monophosphate (AZTMP) from the primer.