Researchers have identified a coronavirus that killed nearly 25,000 piglets in China in 2016 and 2017. Zheng-Li Shi, a virologist at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, and her colleagues report today (April 4) in Nature that the virus, named swine acute diarrhea syndrome coronavirus (SADS-CoV), emerged from horseshoe bats (Rhinolophidae). The same species of bats were the source of sever...
To play good defense against the next viral pandemic, it helps to know the other team’s offense. But the 263 known viruses that circulate in humans represent less than 0.1 percent of the viruses suspected to be lurking out there that could infect people, researchers report in the Feb. 23 Science.
Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) has a large (~235-kb) genome with over 170 ORFs and exploits numerous cellular factors to facilitate its replication. HCMV infection increases protein levels of WD repeat-containing protein 5 (WDR5) during infection, overexpression of WDR5 enhances viral replication, and knockdown of WDR5 dramatically attenuates viral replication. WDR5 is essential for assembling th...
Bats are known to harbor highly pathogenic viruses like Ebola, Marburg, Hendra, Nipah, and SARS-CoV, and yet they do not show clinical signs of disease. In a paper published in the journal Cell Host & Microbe on February 22, scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China find that in bats, an antiviral immune pathway called the STING-interferon pathway is dampened, and bats can maintain...
