One aspect of virology that is confusing to students is the concepts of capsids and nucleocapsids. These two terms describe two different ways that viral nucleic acids and proteins are arranged in virus particles. The capsid (from the Latin capsa for box) is the protein shell surrounding the nucleic acid genome. Below are two different …
The development of high throughput nucleic acid sequencing tools has rapidly increased the pace of virus discovery in the past 20 years. Yet in that time, while the largest DNA genomes have increased by nearly ten times, the largest known RNA viral genome has only increase in size by a tenth. This situation has now …
Planaria and mollusks yield the biggest RNA virus genomes Read More »
An outbreak of respiratory disease in Ugandan chimpanzees provides insight into how virus infection can shape the genome and lead to differences in the cell receptor gene that regulate susceptibility to infection.
The TWiVanguardians take on Bodo saltans virus, a leviathan which infects an abundant flagellated eukaryote in Earth’s waters. <span data-mce-type=”bookmark” style=”display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;” class=”mce_SELRES_start”></span><span data-mce-type=”bookmark” style=”display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;” class=”mce_SELRES_start”></span>&lt;span data-mce-type=”bookmark” style=”display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;” class=”mce_SELRES_start”&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&amp;lt;span data-mce-type=”bookmark” style=”display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: …
Vincent speaks with Sandy Weller about her career and her work on the mechanisms of synthesis, maturation, cleavage and packaging of viral DNA genomes.
Today it is well known that viruses may contain DNA (poxvirus, mimivirus) or RNA (influenza virus, Zika virus), but for many years it was thought that genomes were only made of DNA. The surprise at finding only RNA in a virus is plainly evident in a 1953 letter from Harriett Ephrussi-Taylor to James D. Watson (pictured, Cold Spring Harbor Archives …
