An acute viral infection is characterized by rapid onset of disease, a relatively brief period of symptoms, and resolution within days. It is usually accompanied by early production of infectious virions and elimination of infection by the host immune system. Acute viral infections are typically observed with pathogens such as ...

The development of recombinant DNA methods by Cohen and Boyer in 1973, together with the discovery of reverse transcriptase by Temin and Baltimore in 1970, made it possible to introduce a mutation at any location in a viral genome. The essential reagent is an infectious DNA clone, a double-stranded DNA ...

The first US case of Marburg hemorrhagic fever was reported last month in Colorado. Will there be more? The patient had traveled to Uganda in December 2007 and visited a python cave, which houses thousands of bats - some of which might be reservoirs for Marburg virus. Two weeks after ...

The other day I learned that a friend's relative had recently succumbed to Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease (CJD). He told me that he had been diagnosed with the 'infectious' form of the disease. What does this mean? CJD is one of several neurological diseases known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs). These diseases ...

One of the most widely used continuous cell lines for virology is the HeLa cell line, which was derived in 1951 from Henrietta Lacks. What is the origin of this amazing cell line? In early 1951, Ms. Lacks, a 31-year old mother of five children, was found to have a ...