Virus populations do not consist of a single member with a defined nucleic acid sequence, but are dynamic distributions of nonidentical but related members called a quasispecies (illustrated at left). While next-generation sequencing methods have the capability of describing a quasispecies, the errors associated with this technology have limited progress in our understanding of the genetic …
The first immortal human cell line ever produced, HeLa, originated from a cervical adenocarcinoma taken from Henrietta Lacks. The cell line grew so well that it was used in many laboratories and soon was found to contaminate other cell lines. Now HeLa RNA has made its way into human sequence databases. Although the cause of …
The enzymes that make copies of the DNA or RNA genomes of viruses – nucleic acid polymerases – can be placed into two broad categories depending on whether or not they require a primer, a short piece of DNA or RNA, to get going. The structure of the primer-independent RNA polymerase of hepatitis C virus reveals …
Viruses can be broadly classified according to whether or not the particle is enveloped – surrounded by a membrane taken from the host cell – or naked. Some naked viruses apparently are more modest than we believed. Members of the family Picornaviridae, which include Hepatitis A virus, poliovirus, and Coxsackieviruses, have non-enveloped particles that consist of a protein shell …
We recently discussed the development of a soluble receptor for HIV-1 that provides broad and effective protection against infection of cells and of nonhuman primates. Twenty-five years ago my laboratory published a paper which concluded that using soluble receptors to block virus infection might not be a good idea. In the first paragraph of that paper we wrote: …it has …
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Because viruses must bind to cell surface molecules to initiate replication, the use of soluble receptors to block virus infection has long been an attractive therapeutic option. Soluble receptors have been developed that block infection with rhinoviruses and HIV-1, but these have not been licensed due to their suboptimal potency. A newly designed soluble receptor …
Blocking HIV infection with two soluble receptors Read More »
