Blog

ChAT to fight viral infection Say ‘cholinergic’ and most biologists will think of the autonomic nervous system and acetylcholine’s role as a neurotransmitter. But do you know that T and B cells, macrophages and dendritic cells all express most of the components needed...

  Replicate and destroy or hold fire?Viruses hijack host cells, which they force to produce thousands of identical copies of the original virus. Often, this forced-labor destroys the host cell, which is broken open (lysed), freeing the viral progeny to find and...

The importance of diagnostic for deadly infectious diseases, particularly in resource-deprived settings, cannot be understated. Diagnostic is most important to determine the type and level of medical intervention required, particularly for diseases where onset...

Influenza: does it matter how it looks? When we think of a virus like influenza, what we picture in our mind is the classical text book representation of a rounded object uniformly covered by the surface antigens HA and NA. However, electron microscopy studies have...

How will the llamas save us? One hundred years ago, the relief that followed the end of a most gruesome war was met with the grief of going back to normal life without many loved ones. Not everybody died in the trenches or under the bombs: between 50 and 100 millions...

Dengue virus: are we forgetting the genotypes? With almost 400 million infections every year, the impact of dengue virus (DENV) on global health is of substantial concern. The presence of four co-circulating serotypes, and the development of non-neutralizing enhancing...

The Puzzling Case of Brazilian Yellow Fever Resurgence Yellow fever virus (YFV) is the etiologic agent of yellow fever, an acute hemorrhagic disease transmitted by infected Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. Although there is no specific antiviral drug for yellow fever, a...

Do we change influenza? Seasonal influenza is caused by mutations that change the circulating virus in a way that is no longer (or only partially) recognised by our immune response. Pandemics are generally cause by more substantial reassortments that generate very...

Using the fruit fly to take on Zika virus   Zika virus (ZIKV), a member of the Flaviviridae family, preferentially targets and damages neural stem cells and progenitor cells. Therefore, ZIKV is particularly dangerous during fetal development as infection can lead...

  The unforgettable first flu Does the first flu you ever caught affect how you will cope with all future flu infections you might encounter, including pandemic flu? This fascinating hypothesis, originally proposed by Thomas Francis in the 1940s and 50s, has been...

Papilloma virus won’t give up its weapons easily Human papillomavirus (HPV) is a very common DNA virus that infects the differentiated squamous cell epithelium and mucosal membranes. Most HPV infections are cleared by the immune system and do not result in clinical...

  The narrow path to an effective HIV vaccine How HIV targets immunity Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a lentivirus that causes an infection of the immune system, eventually leading to acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). HIV specifically infects and...

  Zika: how far from a vaccine? About two years after the largest epidemics of Zika virus (ZIKV), how far are we from a vaccine? In a recent minireview on Cell Host & Microbe, Shan et al review the current progress in ZIKV vaccination. The good news is that...

A sharp(er) close-up of Zika virus Structural information on flaviviruses, including dengue (DENV, immature, mature, and fusogenic), Japanese encephalitis (JEV, mature), Tick-borne encephalitis (mature), West Nile virus (immature and mature), and Zika (ZIKV, mature...

The real burden behind Zika infection Zika: a clear and present threat Believe it or not, Zika virus (ZIKV) was once considered rather harmless. This is because most Zika-infected individuals are asymptomatic. But things can change rapidly in the world of viruses....

Rationally designed monoclonal against Zika virus Since its re-emergence in 2013, Zika virus (ZIKV) has made the headlines around the world. This was due both to the unexpectedly rapid spread and to the disturbing neurological complication in babies born from women...

Ebola: What’s in the toolbox? For the almost 40 years that preceded the most recent epidemics, Ebola virus (EBOV) had only caused limited outbreaks of up to 400 cases. However, by the time the 2013 epidemic was over in 2016, the virus had caused 28,616 infections and...

A new host factor for Old World arthritogenic viruses Old World and New World alphaviruses Alphaviruses are mosquito-transmitted viruses that cause a range of human diseases, with manifestations varying from fever or rash to significant inflammatory pathologies,...

Targeting the host to defeat the virus Amongst the various viruses that can cause flu- and cold-like illnesses, rhinoviruses are the most common. Picornaviridae Rhinoviruses (RV) are a family of single-stranded RNA viruses. More than 100 distinct RV serotypes have...

The Achille's heel of influenza Influenza virus evolves so rapidly that last year's antibodies usually cannot protect us from this year's viral strain. This is due to specific characteristics of the virus that make it highly prone to mutate. First, its RNA polymerase...

Post-natal Zika infection: The unknown threat In 2015/16 an unprecedented and unexpected outbreak of Zika virus (ZIKV) in Brazil was associated with a surge of microcephaly cases in newborn babies.  This surge in microcephaly was shown to be caused by maternal...

Astrovirology: Viruses in space Have you ever wondered if viruses are blasted into space by asteroid impacts or volcanoes, whether viruses can survive in space or how we could detect alien viruses that might exist on Jupiter’s moons? If you’re curious about any of the...

Towards conquering the influenza virus This week we walk through a relevant short editorial by Gail Teitzel entitled "The Moving Target of Flu" that highlights some interesting approaches to vaccine design and optimization. Annually, influenza virus infects millions...

Uncovering the virosphere We know that viruses are everywhere and there are a lot of them. But how little we know about them is only now becoming clear. In particular, RNA viruses seem to have many surprises to offer. The reasons for this lack of knowledge, the recent...

Zika infection: does dengue make it worse? This week we walk through an interesting Trends in Microbiology review by Sariol et al. that addresses recent investigations into the possibility of enhanced Zika virus pathogenesis when the infection follows a previous...