Search Results for: virus

Author: Roossinck, Marilyn J. Description: Viruses have traditionally been thought of as pathogens, but many confer a benefit to their hosts and some are essential for the host life cycle. The polydnaviruses of endoparasitoid wasps have evolved with their hosts to become essential. Many of the viral genes are now encoded in the host nucleus. Endogenous retroviruses are abundant in many genomes of higher eukaryotes, and some have been involved in the evolution of their hosts, such as placental mammals. Some mammalian viruses can protect their hosts from infection by…

Author: Miest, Tanner S.; Cattaneo, Roberto Description: Oncolytic virotherapy re-engineers and repurposes replicating viruses for the treatment of cancer. Therapeutic viruses specifically infect and spread within cancer tissue, causing cell death.  In recent years, an increasing number of viruses have been developed as cancer therapeutics. There are nine virus families that are currently used in virotherapy clinical trials. Different viruses have evolved tissue specificities that can be exploited to preferentially destroy certain tumor types. Engineering strategies to improve the therapeutic potential of oncolytic viruses include protection from neutralizing immunity, restriction…

Author: Forterre, Patrick Description: Viruses infecting cells from the three domains of life, Archaea, Bacteria and Eukarya, share homologous features, suggesting that viruses originated very early in the evolution of life. The three current hypotheses for virus origin, e.g. the virus first, the escape and the reduction hypotheses are revisited in this new framework. Theoretical considerations suggest that RNA viruses may have originated in the nucleoprotein world by escape or reduction from RNA-cells, whereas DNA viruses (at least some of them) might have evolved directly from RNA viruses. The antiquity…

Author: Chuong, Edward B. Description: The co-option of endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) is increasingly recognized as a recurrent theme in placental biology, which has far-reaching implications for our understanding of mammalian evolution and reproductive health. Most research in this area has focused on ERV-derived proteins, which have been repeatedly co-opted to promote cell-cell fusion and immune modulation in the placenta. ERVs also harbor regulatory sequences that can potentially control placental gene expression, but there has been limited evidence to support this role. In a recent study, Dunn-Fletcher and colleagues discover a…

Author: Cattaneo, Roberto; Miest, Tanner; Shashkova, Elena V.; Barry, Michael A. Description: Viruses are reprogrammed into vectors for cancer treatment based on three types of modification: targeting, arming and shielding. Viruses that are turned into therapeutics are beginning to find their place in cancer clinical practice, in combination with chemotherapy and radiation.The principles of virus reprogramming are illustrated in this article using adenovirus, a DNA virus with a naked icosahedral capsid, and measles virus, an enveloped RNA virus with a helical capsid. Targeting introduces multiple layers of cancer specificity, thereby…