Blog

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...

What was special about ZIKV? Although it was first identified in 1947, the world first came to be aware of Zika virus (ZIKV) during the 2015 epidemics in South America, where 1.5 million people were infected, and a surge of cases of microcephaly and congenital Zika...

Towards a universal influenza vaccine Is a universal influenza vaccine on the horizon? In this week’s virology post, drawing on an excellent recent review by Sautto et al. (Virology Journal), we highlight some of the innovative approaches being used in attempts to...

The antivirus inside you Infected cells often die. Either they are killed by the infecting virus itself, or they initiate controlled auto-destruction mechanisms (e.g., apoptosis) to prevent the infecting virus from replicating further. Fortunately, our body can...

The virus inside you Since the origin of life on Earth, species have exploited each other, and viruses have proven themselves to be particularly efficient at this. However, new discoveries are revealing how viruses and microbes have helped in the building of the...

It’s the virus, stupid (?) Direct acting antivirals (DAAs) are among the most successful drugs ever developed. It is thanks to DAAs that HIV is no longer a death sentence, and we can now clear hepatitis C virus from many chronically infected patients. Unfortunately,...

Engineered Influenza Virus as a Weapon Against Cancer What if a virus could be used to selectively replicate in – and kill – cancer cells, without harming the normal tissues? Some researchers are aiming to do exactly this by genetically engineering oncolytic viruses...

Do vaccines spread? A live attenuated vaccine is effectively still a virus, and as such it shares with viruses the ability to spread. This is an important and often overlooked concept that is covered with much clarity by Bull, Smithson and Nuismer in Trends in...

Vaccine Research: Then and Now If life expectancy has greatly increased in the past century, this is largely due to vaccines, which, according to the WHO, save 6 million people from death each year. This terrific success, unfortunately, has led many to forget about...

How to survive a phenotypic antiviral screening Antiviral screening is a powerful tool to identify new compounds and therapeutic targets against viruses. Traditionally, an antiviral screening targets a viral protein critical for replication and uses high-throughput in...

Six useful viral qRT-PCR tips Quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) is a sensitive and accurate method for detecting viruses in samples, or to test for transcript variation in infected cells. However, some viruses might add additional levels of trickiness to this...