WSU Virology

Focus Article; Journal club 1:This is an article that details a novel technique for production of HIV (lentiviral) vectors for use as tools of gene therapy. The fascinating approach that was developed by the authors uses baculovirus as a vector to infect human embryonic kidney cells in culture with the genes necessary to produce a lentiviral vector with therapeutic capabilities.

That's a really cool observation, Sarah! It's really all about transmission. Since HIV is (primarily) sexually transmitted, infection in infants (via transovarial transmission) may be considered a dead end for the virus. Perhaps vertical transmission is an aberrance. If HIV would evolve into a less virulent form, perhaps vertical transmission would become more important. Just sayin'...

Oncolytic virotherapy for cancer treatment utilizes viruses for selective infection and death of cancer cells without any adverse effect on normal cells. We previously reported that the human respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is a novel oncolytic virus against androgen-independent PC-3 human prostate cancer cells.

How Oncolytic virus control the inflammation? - Oncolytic virus treatment induced at least a twofold increase or decrease in the expression of 50 genes relative to expression in the PBS-treated tumors (Supplementary Table 1, available online). Of these 50 genes, 48 displayed an increase in expression in the oncolytic virus - treated tumors compared with the controltreated tumors, suggesting that oncolytic virus treatment induced an inflammatory response - To confirm the role of the immune response in oncolytic virus - induced vascular hyperpermeability, we evaluated changes in oncolytic virus - induced vascular leakage in tumor-bearing rats that had been treated with cyclophosphamide before oncolytic virus injection. In addition to its immunosuppressive effects, cyclophosphamide blocks infl ammation and reduces viral clearance, both of which increase the propagation of oncolytic viruses, thereby enhancing therapeutic effi cacy of oncolytic viruses. (Effect of Tumor Microenvironment Modulation on the Efficacy of Oncolytic Virus Therapy, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=Effect%20of%20Tumor%20Microenvironment%20Modulation%20on%20the%20Efficacy%20of%20Oncolytic%20Virus%20Therapy)

Review paper - http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1442-2042.2009.02383.x/full

Vaccinations are nice, until an antigenic strain is formed. In which case it's back to the drawing board to create a new one as soon as possible. Influenza is constantly changing in order to thrive. Amazing!

This is the topic of my focus paper.

Great paper for introductory look at adapting adeno-associated viruses (AAV) to different cell tropisms.  Although the scope of this article is the CNS, and more specifically the brain.  Also goes over how brain vasculature expresses different characteristics in disease states that allows for specification of AAVs to have tropism for the diseased epithelial beds.

This paper describes the fascinating replication cycle of brachoviruses, which integrate their genomes (or portions of their genomes) into both wasp and caterpillar hosts, to benefit the parasitic wasp. In this role, these viruses function as endosymbionts, challenging the traditional view of all viruses as parasites.

Please read this paper for the course. I don't plan to discuss it much more in the course, but there may be questions on this story on your exam.

in this article we can know about unique novel tymoviridae virus. they are characterising about this new virus. one of the most unique feature about them is they can replicate even in mosquitoes!in consider that no mosquitoes have been reported as vectores of plant viruse,this research is quite suprising thing! but something i want to recommend is ...first At the result, it said cell lysates did not react with antisera to known only a few arboviruses of the genera. And said this virus is an uncommon arbovirus . I think the author should define more specially about the subject. and second, this research said that CuTLV virus may be transferred to male mosquitoes feed on plant juices and can started to replicate in the insect also. Because marifviruses can potentially replicate both in plants and in insects but, I can't figure out how this viruse can move into human,(animal) different kinds of species , can make a disease even by male ! I think the writer should more explain about that route. the last thing is There is many pictures .but some of them ,like figure 4&figure 5, are too massy to be hard recognized or unneeded thing. So I think they need more arrangement about picture.

How cool? So, so, so, so cool! You MUST check out the videos.

How cool? So, so, so, so cool! You MUST check out the videos.

from that writing i could find the anwer "why rna virus can maintain their big size?". because they have really complex rigid structure

interesting that this is the worst year but I feel that it hasnt been mentioned nearly as much as it has the past couple years

Components of viral machinery being used to modify the genome of an organism. Exciting stuff yes?

from that research, i could know about what kinds of other virus which can use mosquitoes for their movement.