  Being HIV-1-PR an essential enzyme in the viral life cycle, its inhibition
can control AIDS. Because the folding of single domain proteins, like HIV-1-PR
is controlled by local elementary structures (LES, folding units stabilized by
strongly interacting, highly conserved amino acids) which have evolved over
myriads of generations to recognize and strongly attract each other so as to
make the protein fold fast, we suggest a novel type of HIV-1-PR inhibitors
which interfere with the folding of the protein: short peptides displaying the
same amino acid sequence of that of LES. Theoretical and experimental evidence
for the specificity and efficiency of such inhibitors are presented.
