There aren’t enough human organs to meet the needs for transplantation, so we have turned to pigs. Unfortunately pig cells contain porcine endogenous retroviruses, PERVS, which could infect the transplant recipient, leading to tumor formation. But why worry? Just use CRISPR to purge the PERVs. The genomes of many species on Earth are littered with endogenous …
The short answer to the question posed in the title of this blog is: we don’t know. Why would we even consider that a prior dengue virus infection would increase the severity of a Zika virus infection? The first time you are infected with dengue virus, you are likely to have a mild disease involving …
Does prior dengue virus infection exacerbate Zika virus disease? Read More »
Frogs don’t get flu (as far as I know) but their skin contains a peptide that inhibits the replication of influenza virus (link to paper). Frog skin contains host defense peptides (HDPs), part of the innate immune defenses of many species. They were first found in amphibians by Michael Zasloff, who, as part of his …
Could ancient host proteins contribute to the replication of a modern virus? The answer is, not very well (link to paper). Viruses are obligate intracellular parasites, which means that they have to get inside of a host cell to produce more viruses. The genomes of all viruses, even the biggest ones, do not encode anywhere …
I just love it when long standing mysteries in virology are suddenly solved, typically by the use of new technologies. In this story, the long standing mystery was why poxvirus mRNAs have a stretch of poly(A) in their 5′-noncoding regions. The answer is that it allows the ribosome to preferentially translate these viral mRNAs over …
At the ASM Microbe 2017 meeting last week in New Orleans, Ed Yong interviewed astronaut Kate Rubins for the keynote address. The large theatre was packed, and overflow crowds watched the event on monitors throughout the New Orleans Convention Center. But I think that a scientist should have interviewed Dr. Rubins. Rich Condit and I …
