Influenza A viruses (IAV) are widespread viruses affecting avian and mammalian species worldwide. IAVs from avian species can be transmitted to mammals including humans and, thus, they are of inherent pandemic concern. Most of the efforts to understa...
During their long evolutionary history viruses generated many proteins de novo by a mechanism called “overprinting”. Overprinting is a process in which critical nucleotide substitutions in a pre-existing gene can induce the expression of a novel prot...
Highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N6 viruses have been circulating in poultry in Asia since 2013 and producing serious diseases in chickens. Here, we analyzed the genetic properties of 10 H5N6 subtypes AIVs from geese in 2015–2016 in Guangdon...
Despite the recent pandemic, the origin of its causative agent, SARS-CoV-2, remains controversial. This study identifies several prototype SARS-CoV-2 variants (proto-variants) that are descendants of the Wuhan variant. A thorough evaluation of the ev...
Wild birds play an important role in the emergence, evolution, and spread of zoonotic avian influenza viruses (AIVs). However, there are few studies on the cross-species transmission of the H3N8 AIV originating from wild birds. In this study, we inve...
The extension of virology beyond its traditional medical, veterinary, or agricultural applications, now called environmental virology, has shown that viruses are both the most numerous and diverse biological entities on Earth. In particular, virus is...
We previously developed a rapid and simple gold nanoparticle(NP)-based genomic microarray assay for identification of the avian H5N1 virus and its discrimination from other influenza A virus strains (H1N1, H3N2). In this study, we expanded the platfo...
Influenza A Viruses (IAV) in domestic swine (IAV-S) are associated with sporadic zoonotic transmission at the human–animal interface. Previous pandemic IAVs originated from animals, which emphasizes the importance of characterizing human immuni...
In South America, the evolutionary history of influenza A virus (IAV) in swine has been obscured by historically low levels of surveillance, and this has hampered the assessment of the zoonotic risk of emerging viruses. The extensive genetic diversit...
Hepatitis delta virus (HDV) is a defective human virus that lacks the ability to produce its own envelope proteins and is thus dependent on the presence of a helper virus, which provides its surface proteins to produce infectious particles. Hepatitis...
Madin–Darby canine kidney (MDCK) cells are commonly used for the isolation of mammalian influenza A viruses. The goal of this study was to compare the sensitivity and suitability of the original MDCK cell line in comparison with MDCK-derived ce...
Since the initial report of African swine fever (ASF) in Kenya in 1921, the disease has predominantly been confined to Africa. However, in 2007, an ASF genotype II virus of unknown provenance was introduced to Georgia. This was followed by its rampan...
One of the major evolutionary transitions that led to DNA replacing RNA as the primary informational molecule in biological systems is still the subject of an intense debate in the scientific community. DNA polymerases are currently split into variou...
The genomes of RNA viruses may be monopartite or multipartite, and sub-genomic particles such as defective RNAs (D RNAs) or satellite RNAs (satRNAs) can be associated with some of them. D RNAs are small, deletion mutants of a virus that have lost ess...
We propose a hypothesis for the simultaneous emergence of bacteria, archaea, viruses, and mobile elements by sequential and concrete biochemical pathways. The emergence process can be considered analogous to crystallization, where genetic and biochem...
The environmental tenacity of influenza A viruses (IAVs) in the environment likely plays a role in their transmission; IAVs are able to remain infectious in aquatic habitats and may have the capacity to seed outbreaks when susceptible wild bird hosts...
The marine environment presents a favorable avenue for potential therapeutic agents as a reservoir of new bioactive natural products. Due to their numerous potential pharmacological effects, marine-derived natural products—particularly marine p...
Emerging viruses have caused concerns about pollinator population declines, as multi-host RNA viruses may pose a health threat to pollinators and associated arthropods. In order to understand the ecology and impact these viruses have, we studied thei...
Virus taxonomy uses a Linnaean-like subsumption hierarchy to classify viruses into taxonomic units at species and higher rank levels. Virus species are considered monophyletic groups of mobile genetic elements (MGEs) often delimited by the phylogenet...
The search for extraterrestrial life, recently fueled by the discovery of exoplanets, requires defined biosignatures. Current biomarkers include those of extremophilic organisms, typically archaea. Yet these cellular organisms are highly complex, whi...
In this paper the hypothesis that prions and prion-like molecules could have initiated the chemical evolutionary process which led to the eventual emergence of life is reappraised. The prions first hypothesis is a specific application of the protein-...
Pandemics are a consequence of a series of processes that span scales from viral biology at 10−9 m to global transmission at 106 m. The pathogen passes from one host species to another through a sequence of events that starts with an infected reservo...
Clade 2.3.4.4 H5Nx highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses (HPAIVs) of the “goose/Guangdong” lineage have caused a series of European epizootics since 2014. During autumn/winter 2020–2021, several H5Nx subtypes were detected in th...
Increasing reports of tobacco rattle virus (TRV) and cycas necrotic stunt virus (CNSV) in herbaceous Paeonia worldwide highlight the importance of conserving the genetic resources of this economically important ornamental and medicinal crop. The unkn...
Identifying molecular targets for eliciting broadly virus-neutralizing antibodies is one of the key steps toward development of vaccines against emerging viral pathogens. Owing to genomic and somatic diversities among viral species, identifying prote...
Three main hypotheses have been proposed to explain the origin of viruses: the exogenisation (escape) hypothesis, suggesting that mobile genetic elements gained infectivity and autonomy; the degeneration hypothesis, proposing that viruses arose throu...
The view that satellite RNAs (satRNAs) and satellite viruses are purely molecular parasites of their cognate helper viruses has changed. The molecular mechanisms underlying the synergistic and/or antagonistic interactions among satRNAs/satellite viru...
Influenza A viruses infect many animal species and have great zoonotic potential. The epidemiology of swine influenza worldwide is of particular importance because the pig can act as a “mixing vessel” where avian and human influenza virus...
In December 2022 and January 2023, we isolated clade 2.3.4.4b H5N1 high-pathogenicity avian influenza (HPAI) viruses from six American crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos) from Prince Edward Island and a red fox (Vulpes vulpes) from Newfoundland, Canada. Us...
In 1911, Peyton Rous (Nobel Prize winner in 1966) demonstrated that a virus (i.e., RSV) caused cancer in chickens. In 1976, Bishop and Varmus (Nobel Prize winners in 1989) showed that the cellular origin of retroviral oncogenes was actually normal ce...
Pigs serve as a mixing vessel for influenza viruses and can independently promote the emergence of pandemic strains in humans. During our surveillance of pig populations from 2021 to 2023 in China, 11 H1 subtype swine influenza viruses (SIVs) were is...
The constant crosstalk between the large avian reservoir of influenza A viruses (IAV) and its mammalian hosts drives viral evolution and facilitates their host switching. Direct adaptation of an avian strain to human or reassortment between avian-ori...
Phylogenetic trees of coronaviruses are difficult to interpret because they undergo frequent genomic recombination. Here, we propose a new method, coloured genomic bootstrap (CGB) barcodes, to highlight the polyphyletic origins of human sarbecoviruse...
Samples collected from two avian influenza outbreaks in Bagmati Province in central Nepal between January and March 2023 were positive for H5N1. Full genomes were generated for both viruses, which revealed that one of the viruses was very similar to...
Infectious laryngotracheitis outbreaks have been observed in a short period of time in broiler, layer, and broiler breeder flocks, resulting in clinical signs and high mortality. The affected farms are located in the same geographical area, which is...
Ticks are vectors of several pathogens that can be transmitted to humans and their geographic ranges are expanding. The exposure of ticks to new hosts in a rapidly changing environment is likely to further increase the prevalence and diversity of tic...
In this Special Issue, a wide variety of original and review articles provide a timely overview of how viruses are recognized by and evade from cellular innate immunity, which represents the first line of defense against viruses [...]
Recent advances in high-throughput sequencing technologies have led to the discovery of a plethora of previously unknown viruses in animal samples. Some of these newly detected viruses are closely related to human pathogens. A prime example are the h...
Influenza A and influenza B viruses (FLUAV and FLUBV, respectively) cause significant respiratory disease, hospitalization, and mortality each year. Despite causing at least 25% of the annual disease burden, FLUBV is historically understudied. Unlike...
Emergence of genetically and antigenically diverse strains of influenza to which the human population has no or limited immunity necessitates continuous risk assessments to determine the likelihood of these viruses acquiring adaptations that facilita...
Bunyaviruses represent the largest group of RNA viruses and are the causative agent of a variety of febrile and hemorrhagic illnesses. Originally characterized as a single serotype in Africa, the number of described bunyaviruses now exceeds over 500,...
The viral genus Henipavirus includes two highly virulent zoonotic viruses of serious public health concern. Hendra henipavirus and Nipah henipavirus outbreaks are restricted to Australia and Southeast Asia, respectively. The Henipavirus genus compris...
The H9N2 virus continues to spread in wild birds and poultry worldwide. At the beginning of 2016, the H9N2 Avian influenza virus (AIV) was detected in Morocco for the first time; despite the implementation of vaccination strategies to control the dis...
Superimposition of protein structures is key in unravelling structural homology across proteins whose sequence similarity is lost. Structural comparison provides insights into protein function and evolution. Here, we review some of the original findi...
The origin of genes is one of the most enigmatic events in the origin of life. It has been suggested that noncoding (nc) RNA was probably a precursor in the formation of the first polypeptide, and also at the origin of the first manifestation of life...
Rodents (order Rodentia), followed by bats (order Chiroptera), comprise the largest percentage of living mammals on earth. Thus, it is not surprising that these two orders account for many of the reservoirs of the zoonotic RNA viruses discovered to d...
Studies of oncogenic viruses have made seminal contributions to the molecular biology of cancer. Key discoveries include the identification of viral oncogenes and cellular proto-oncogenes, elucidation of signal transduction pathways, and identificati...
Livestock products supply about 13 percent of energy and 28 percent of protein in diets consumed worldwide. Diarrhea is a leading cause of sickness and death of beef and dairy calves in their first month of life and also affecting adult cattle, resul...
Jan Svoboda triggered investigations on non-defective avian sarcoma viruses. These viruses were a critical factor in the genetic understanding of retroviruses. They provided the single and unique access to the field and facilitated the discovery of t...
All life must survive their corresponding viruses. Thus antiviral systems are essential in all living organisms. Remnants of virus derived information are also found in all life forms but have historically been considered mostly as junk DNA. However,...
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