Virology News

Experts have delayed a decision about whether controversial research into the H5N1 bird flu virus should be published.

And do it grinds on...meanwhile, so does the virus

The nervous system has evolved rather complicated barriers that facilitate access to nutrients and contact with the outside world, but block entry of pathogens and toxins [1]. However, when these barriers are reduced for any number of reasons, nervous system infections are possible. When they occur, they can be devastating and, even with good antiviral drugs, difficult to manage.

EXCELLENT review of a very interesting topic.  Edited by Vincent Racaniello, who obviously has more than one job  B-)

"Opinion: What Is Life?|...What should the definition contain, to be suitable for all varieties of observable life? Humans, animals, plants, microorganisms. Do viruses also belong to life?"

I used to boggle students' minds with this one.  Or thought I did - maybe they didn't care??

However, one Honours student (who must have been smart; he dropped out and is now a rabbi) gave me this beautiful definition:

"Life is a series of eddies in the entropic flow - and viruses are smaller eddies within those swirls".

WASHINGTON -- What can you do to help stop a ravaging virus from spreading farther in Maryland's turtle population?

Told you we'd do "other things".  I quite like turtles.

The history books will tell you that it was only in 1933 that Influenza A virus was shown to BE a virus - yet there appears to me to be very clear evidence that French scientists working in 1918 actually made the first call.  From "Quelques notions experimentales sur le virus de la grippe", by MM Charles Nicolle and Charles Lebailly in Annales de l'Institut Pasteur of 1918:

Conclusions

1⁰ The bronchial expectoration of people suffering from influenza, collected during the acute period, is virulent.
2⁰ The monkey (M. cynomolgus) is sensitive to the virus by sub-conjunctival and nasal inoculation.
3⁰ The influenza agent is a filterable organism. The inoculation of the filtrate has indeed reproduced the illness in two of the people injected subcutaneously; on the other hand when given intravenously it appears to be ineffective (two failures out of two tries).
4⁰ It is possible that the flu virus does not occur in the patient’s blood. The blood of a monkey with flu, inoculated subcutaneously, did not infect man; the negative blood result of subject 2 at D, is however, not convincing, the blood route seeming to be ineffective for the flu virus transmission.

(Translated by Mrs Francoise Williamson)

It convinced me.  But, as my medical colleagues will be quick to tell you, I'm an amateur in this area.  Albeit an enthusiastic one...B-)

Picture courtesy of Russell Kightley Media

News, video, background information and discussion on the spread of the Schmallenberg virus in the UK...

Sometimes you need to get news about viruses that is relevant to people whose living is affected...farmers, in this case

HANOI, Vietnam — Thought bird flu was gone? Recent human deaths in Asia and Egypt are a reminder that the H5N1 virus is still alive and dangerous, and Vietnam is grappling with a new strain that has outsmarted vaccines used to protect poultry flocks.

And they sit in Geneva and argue....

...we find that Ded1p and glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH), which is another host factor for TBSV, play non-overlapping functions to enhance (+)-strand synthesis. ... two small RNA viruses, which do not code for their own helicases, seems to recruit a host RNA helicase to aid their replication in infected cells.

Both ss(-)RNA and ss(+)RNA viruses need to bias their replication machinery towards over-production of the genomic strand - and this paper goes a long way to explaining how that happens for two unrelated ss(+)RNA viruses infecting very different hosts.

Propitious Prions |...The poor cousins of viruses come out of the shadows - and turn out to be actually useful!  For yeasts, anyway.  Epigenetics and Lamarckian evolution becoming respectable at last?

Maize streak virus -strain A (MSV-A; Genus Mastrevirus, Family Geminiviridae), the maize-adapted strain of MSV that causes maize streak disease throughout sub-Saharan Africa, probably arose between 100 and 200 years ago via homologous recombination...

Sometimes you have to be proud of your academic children...B-)

Picture courtesy Russell Kightley Media