A computational exploration of global and temporal dynamics of selection pressure on HIV-1 Vif polymorphism

•Analyzed over 50,000 Vif sequences of HIV-1 M group from global circulating strains.•Revealed Vif evolutionary dynamics under host-mediated selection pressure.•Vif is under positive selection, with contrasting trends in dn/ds and entropy.•Vif functional motifs are conserved, offering targets for universal HIV-1 vaccines.•Vif showed mutational plasticity in binding sites, crucial for HIV-1 adaptability. Virion infectivity factor (Vif), an accessory protein of HIV-1 (human immunodeficiency virus type 1), antagonizes host APOBEC3 protein (apolipoprotein B mRNA editing enzyme, catalytic polypeptide 3) or A3 via proteasomal degradation, facilitating viral replication. HLA (Human leukocyte antigens) alleles, host restriction factors, and error-prone reverse transcription contribute to the global polymorphic dynamics of HIV, impacting effective vaccine design. Our computational analysis of over 50,000 HIV-1 M vif sequences from the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) database (1998–2021) revealed positive selection pressure on the vif gene (nonsynonymous to synonymous ratio, dn/ds=1.58) and an average entropy score of 0.372 in protein level. Interestingly, over the years (1998–2021), a decreasing trend of dn/ds (1.68 to 1.47) and an increasing trend of entropy (0.309 to 0.399) was observed. The predicted mutational frequency against Vif consensus sequence decreased over time (slope = -0.00024, p