Viruses, Volume 13, Issue 9

Viruses are obligate intracellular parasites that are dependent on host factors for their replication. One such host protein, p97 or the valosin-containing protein (VCP), is a highly conserved AAA ATPase that facilitates replication of diverse RNA- a...

Evidence is emerging that severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) can infect various organs of the body, including cardiomyocytes and cardiac endothelial cells in the heart. This review focuses on the effects of SARS-CoV-2 in the...

The error rate displayed during template copying to produce viral RNA progeny is a biologically relevant parameter of the replication complexes of viruses. It has consequences for virus–host interactions, and it represents the first step in the diver...

The neurovascular units (NVU) are the minimal functional units of the blood–brain barrier (BBB), composed of endothelial cells, pericytes, astrocytes, microglia, neurons, and the basement membrane. The BBB serves as an important interface for immune...

Human Adenoviruses (HAdV) are known to be potentially associated with strong inflammatory responses and morbidity in pediatric patients. Although most of the primary infections are self-limiting, the severity of clinical presentation, the elevation o...

(1) This study aimed to evaluate characteristics, perinatal outcomes, and placental pathology of pregnant women with or without SARS-CoV-2 infection in the context of maternal PCR cycle threshold (C_T) values. (2) This was a retrospective case-control...

Foot and mouth disease (FMD) is a highly contagious disease of cloven-hoofed animals with serious economic consequences. FMD is endemic in Southeast Asia (SEA) and East Asia (EA) with the circulation of multiple serotypes, posing a threat to Australi...

The novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has expanded into a global pandemic, with more than 220 million affected persons and almost 4.6 million deaths by 8 September 2021. In particular, Europe and the Americas have bee...

Viral infections can give rise to a systemic decrease in the total number of lymphocytes in the blood, referred to as lymphopenia. Lymphopenia may affect the host adaptive immune responses and impact the clinical course of acute viral infections. Det...

The COVID-19 pandemic has hugely impacted global public health and economy. The COVID-19 has also shown potential impacts on maternal perinatal and neonatal outcomes. This systematic review aimed to summarize the evidence from existing systematic rev...

Infants exposed to Zika virus (ZIKV) prenatally may develop birth defects, developmental deficits, or remain asymptomatic. It is unclear why some infants are more affected than others, although enhancement of maternal ZIKV infection via immunity to a...

Since its outbreak in December 2019, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), led to an enormous rise in scientific response with an excess of COVID-19-related studies o...

The emergence of West Nile virus (WNV) and Usutu virus (USUV) in addition to the autochthonous tick-borne encephalitis virus (TBEV) in Europe causes rising concern for public and animal health. The first equine case of West Nile neuroinvasive disease...

HIV persists via integration of the viral DNA into the human genome. The HIV DNA pool within an infected individual is a complex population that comprises both intact and defective viral genomes, each with a distinct integration site, in addition to...

The worldwide pandemic caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) and its emergence of variants needs rapid and point-of-care testing methods for a broad diagnosis. The regular RT-qPCR is time-consuming and limited in...

It has been a year since Stefan Kunz, a Full Professor since 2017 at the Faculty of Biology and Medicine of the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, passed away [...]

The localization of viral nucleic acids in the cell is essential for understanding the infectious cycle. One of the strategies developed for this purpose is the use of nucleotide analogs such as bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU, analog to thymine) or bromouri...

The classical laboratory mouse strains are genetic mosaics of three Mus musculus subspecies that occupy distinct regions of Eurasia. These strains and subspecies carry infectious and endogenous mouse leukemia viruses (MLVs) that can be pathogenic and...

In aquaculture, disease management and pathogen control are key for a successful fish farming industry. In past years, European catfish farming has been flourishing. However, devastating fish pathogens including limiting fish viruses are considered a...

Minipigs play an important role in biomedical research and they have also been used as donor animals for preclinical xenotransplantations. Since zoonotic microorganisms including viruses can be transmitted when pig cells, tissues or organs are transp...

Sunflowers (Helianthus annuus L.) are susceptible to multiple diseases in field production. In this study, we collected diseased sunflower leaves in fields located in South Dakota, USA, for virome investigation. The leaves showed visible symptoms on...

Porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) is the predominant cause of an acute, highly contagious enteric disease in neonatal piglets. There are currently no approved drugs against PEDV infection. Here, we report the development of a nanoluciferase (NLu...

The causal connection between serum biomarkers and COVID-19 severity or pathogenicity in children is unclear. The aim of this study was to describe clinical and immunological features of children affected by COVID-19. The secondary aim was to evaluat...

Over the past decade, tremendous progress has been made in systems biology-based approaches to studying immunity to viral infections and responses to vaccines. These approaches that integrate multiple facets of the immune response, including transcri...

Genomic surveillance of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is crucial and mainly achieved by amplicon sequencing protocols. Overlapping tiled-amplicons are generated to establish contiguous SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences, which enable the precise resolution of inf...

Rotarix^® vaccine was implemented nationwide in Zambia in 2013. In this study, four unusual strains collected in the post-vaccine period were subjected to whole genome sequencing and analysis. The four strains possessed atypical genotype constellation...

The small cellular molecule inositol hexakisphosphate (IP6) has been known for ~20 years to promote the in vitro assembly of HIV-1 into immature virus-like particles. However, the molecular details underlying this effect have been determined only rec...

Bovine herpesvirus-1 (BoHV-1) is a major cause of rhinotracheitis and vulvovaginitis in cattle. VP8, the major tegument protein of BoHV-1, is essential for viral replication in the host. VP8 is phosphorylated by the viral kinase US3, mediating its tr...

Human leukocyte antigen (HLA) is a group of molecules involved in inflammatory and infective responses. We evaluated blood sHLA-E and sHLA-G levels in hospitalized COVID-19 patients with respiratory failure and their relationship with clinical evolut...

Herpes stromal keratitis (HSK) is a disease that commonly affects the cornea and external eye and is caused by Herpes Simplex Virus type 1 (HSV-1). This virus infects approximately 66% of people worldwide; however, only a small portion of these peopl...

An evolutionary arms race occurs between viruses and hosts. Hosts have developed an array of antiviral mechanisms aimed at inhibiting replication and spread of viruses, reducing their fitness, and ultimately minimising pathogenic effects. In turn, vi...

More than 50% of the HIV-1 latent reservoir is maintained by clonal expansion. The clonally expanded HIV-1-infected cells can contribute to persistent nonsuppressible low-level viremia and viral rebound. HIV-1 integration site and proviral genome lan...

Porcine astrovirus type 3 (PoAstV3) has been previously identified as a cause of polioencephalomyelitis in swine and continues to cause disease in the US swine industry. Herein, we describe the characterization of both untranslated regions, frameshif...

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) is a major pathogen that causes acute/chronic hepatitis. Continuous HBV infection can lead to the development of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Although several different anti-HBV treatments are available for chronic hepatiti...

Human papillomavirus (HPV)-related multiphenotypic sinonasal carcinoma (HMSC) is a recently defined tumor subtype with apparent favorable clinical outcome despite aggressive histomorphology. However, in recent years, additional numbers of cases, with...

Papillomaviruses cause persistent, and usually self-limiting, infections in the mucosal and cutaneous surfaces of the host epithelium. However, in some cases, infection with an oncogenic HPV can lead to cancer. The viral genome is a small, double-str...

Many viruses that cause serious diseases in humans and animals, including the betacoronaviruses (beta-CoVs), such as SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, and the recently identified SARS-CoV-2, have natural reservoirs in bats. Because these viruses rely entirely on t...

Acinetobacter baumannii is a nosocomial pathogen, which is a problem worldwide due to the emergence of a difficult-to-treat multidrug-resistant A. baumannii (MDRAB). Endolysins are hydrolytic enzymes produced by a bacteriophage that can be used as a...

Herpes simplex virus type-1 (HSV-1) and type-2 (HSV-2) are prototypical alphaherpesviruses that are characterized by their unique properties to infect trigeminal and dorsal root ganglionic neurons, respectively, and establish life-long latent infecti...

Recently discovered Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR)/Cas13 proteins are programmable RNA-guided ribonucleases that target single-stranded RNA (ssRNA). CRISPR/Cas13-mediated RNA targeting has emerged as a powerful too...

Human noroviruses (HuNoVs) are the most common cause of viral gastroenteritis resulting annually in ~219,000 deaths and a societal cost of ~USD 60 billion, and no antivirals or vaccines are available. Here, we assess the anti-norovirus activity of ne...

An outbreak caused by H7N3 low pathogenicity avian influenza virus (LPAIV) occurred in commercial turkey farms in the states of North Carolina (NC) and South Carolina (SC), United States in March of 2020. Subsequently, H7N3 high pathogenicity avian i...

In plants, HEN1-facilitated methylation at 3′ end ribose is a critical step of small-RNA (sRNA) biogenesis. A mutant of well-studied Arabidopsis HEN1 (AtHEN1), hen1-1, showed a defective developmental phenotype, indicating the importance of sRNA meth...

Viral hepatitis remains one of the most significant health issues globally, directly responsible for over 1 million deaths each year and affecting almost 300 million people around the world. Scientific research in recent decades has brought about imp...

Type I Interferons (IFN-I) are a family of potent antiviral cytokines that act through the direct restriction of viral replication and by enhancing antiviral immunity. However, these powerful cytokines are a caged lion, as excessive and sustained IFN...

We do not always remember the exact moment in which we first met our friends [...]

Understanding how viruses with multi-segmented genomes incorporate one copy of each segment into their capsids remains an intriguing question. Here, we review our recent progress and describe the advancements made in understanding the genome packagin...

Recent years have witnessed the discovery of several new viruses belonging to the family Arteriviridae, expanding the known diversity and host range of this group of complex RNA viruses. Although the pathological relevance of these new viruses is not...

The use of dengue virus (DENV) vaccines has been hindered by the complexities of antibody dependent enhancement (ADE). Current late-stage vaccine candidates utilize attenuated and chimeric DENVs that produce particles of varying maturities. Antibodie...

Nonstructural protein 1 (NS1) of influenza virus (IFV) is essential for evading interferon (IFN)-mediated antiviral responses, thereby contributing to the pathogenesis of influenza. Mitophagy is a type of autophagy that selectively removes damaged mi...