An invitation to recent graduates: publish your dissertation/thesis background section as a review in Virology Journal

Virology Journal will publish background sections of approved dissertations or theses as Review Articles.     

Coronaviruses: emerging and re-emerging pathogens in humans and animals

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) and recently emerged Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) epidemics have proven the ability of coronaviruses to cross species barrier and emerge rapidly in humans. Other coronaviruses such as porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) are also known to cause major disease epidemics in animals wiith huge economic loss. This special issue in Virology Journal aims to highlight the advances and key discoveries in the animal origin, viral evolution, epidemiology, diagnostics and pathogenesis of the emerging and re-emerging coronaviruses in both humans and animals.     

Update from the 7th annual meeting of the Italian Society of Virology

The Italian Society of Virology (SIV) held a meeting in Orvieto (June 24-26, 2007) aimed at promoting interactions and collaborations between scientists in the field of Virology. The meeting had an attendance of about 170 virologists from Italy. In accordance with the normal format of the SIV National Meeting the conference transcended all areas of Virology. Sessions included invited speakers together with selected oral presentation. Covered topics included: General Virology and Viral Genetics, Medical Virology and Antiviral Therapy, Viral Biotechnologies and Gene Therapy, Viral Oncogenesis and Vaccines, Virus-Host Interactions and Pathogenesis, Emerging and Zoonotic Viral Infections. In this edition, a special effort was addressed to the HPV infection and prevention and to the guidelines for the preemptive (presymptomatic) therapy of human cytomegalovirus infections in transplant recipients. A summary of the main topics are reported.     

Markov model recognition and classification of DNA/protein sequences within large text databases

MOTIVATION: Short sequence patterns frequently define regions of biological interest (binding sites, immune epitopes, primers, etc.), yet a large fraction of this information exists only within the scientific literature and is thus difficult to locate via conventional means (e.g. keyword queries or manual searches). We describe herein a system to accurately identify and classify sequence patterns from within large corpora using an n-gram Markov model (MM). RESULTS: As expected, on test sets we found that identification of sequences with limited alphabets and/or regular structures such as nucleic acids (non-ambiguous) and peptide abbreviations (3-letter) was highly accurate, whereas classification of symbolic (1-letter) peptide strings with more complex alphabets was more problematic. The MM was used to analyze two very large, sequence-containing corpora: over 7.75 million Medline abstracts and 9000 full-text articles from Journal of Virology. Performance was benchmarked by comparing the results with Journal of Virology entries in two existing manually curated databases: VirOligo and the HLA Ligand Database. Performance estimates were 98 +/- 2% precision/84% recall for primer identification and classification and 67 +/- 6% precision/85% recall for peptide epitopes. We also find a dramatic difference between the amounts of sequence-related data reported in abstracts versus full text. Our results suggest that automated extraction and classification of sequence elements is a promising, low-cost means of sequence database curation and annotation. AVAILABILITY: MM routine and datasets are available upon request.     

Potential of adenovirus as a vector for sustained gene expression

Inder Verma received his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel, in 1971, and was a postdoctoral fellow (with David Baltimore) in the Department of Biology, Massachussetts Institute of Technology. He is currently American Cancer Society Professor of Molecular Biology, Chair of the Laboratory of Genetics at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Biology, University of California at San Diego. Inder Verma is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (USA). He is a member of the editorial boards of The Journal of Gene Medicine, Journal of Virology and Gene, and serves on several other scientific advisory boards. His major fields of interest are molecular analysis of oncoproteins, and suppressor genes, gene therapy involving retroviral, adenoviral, AAV vectors, and generation of novel lentiviral vectors. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

PI Recruitment

Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) was founded in 1956. With scientific research elitists, Wuhan Institute of Virology is the only comprehensive institute carrying out fundamental researches on virology in CAS. The institute offers a highly interactive research environment and outstanding research facilities,including BSL3 laboratories. According to the national strategic need, Wuhan Institute of Virology has recently extended its emphasis from general virology to human virology and emerging diseases research.     

Report of the fifth symposium on emerging viral diseases

Emerging viral diseases pose global threat to public health.It is essential to build capacity to response and counteract against emerging viral diseases.Towards achieving this important goal of public health,the State Key Laboratory of Virology of China has organized the International Symposium on Emerging Viral Diseases since 2004.This symposium series has been held every two years at Wuhan Institute of Virology.The fifth symposium was held from October 24 to 27,2012.     

Proceedings of the fourth National Congress of the Italian Society of Virology

The aim of the yearly National Congress of the Italian Society of Virology (SIV) is to promote the discussion between senior and younger researchers to improve the knowledge and scientific collaboration among the various areas of Virology. The invited and selected lecturers of the fourth National Congress of SIV covered the following topics: general Virology and viral Genetics; virus host interactions and pathogenesis; viral immunology and vaccines; emerging and re-emerging viral diseases; antiviral therapy; innovative diagnostics; viral biotechnologies and gene therapy. As in the previous edition (Salata and Palù, 2004 J Cell Physiol 199:171-173), a specific topic was thoroughly covered in a roundtable. In this edition the overviewed topic was HCV, from epidemiology and genetic variability to immunology and antiviral therapy. The final program can be found at the web site http://www.siv-virologia.it. A summary of the oral presentations of the 2004 meeting is reported.     

Highlights from the 5th Annual Meeting of the Italian Society of Virology

The 5th National Congress of the Italian Society of Virology (SIV) was attended by junior- and senior-level virologists to promote interactions and scientific collaborations among the different areas of Virology and allied sciences. The invited and selected lecturers covered the following topics: General Virology and Viral Genetics; Virus-host Interaction and Pathogenesis; Viral Oncogenesis; Viral Immunology and Vaccines; Anti-viral Therapy; Innovative Diagnostics; Viral Biotechnologies and Cell and Gene Therapy. As in the previous editions (Salata and Palù, 2004; Salata et al., 2005), a specific topic was thoroughly covered in a roundtable. This year the elected subject was "HIV: determinants of pathogenicity and clinical implications." The final program and the abstract book can be found at the web site http://www.siv-virologia.it. This report summarizes the lessons learned from the plenary lectures and the selected oral presentations of the 2005 meeting.     

Virion swelling is not required for cotranslational disassembly of cowpea chlorotic mottle virus in vitro.

The mechanism by which virions of cowpea chlorotic mottle virus (CCMV) disassemble and allow for translation of the virion RNA is not well understood. Previous models have suggested that virion swelling is required to expose the virion RNA for translation in a process referred to as cotranslational disassembly (M. Brisco, R. Hull, and T. M. A. Wilson, Virology 148:210-217, 1986; J. W. Roenhorst, J. W. M. van Lent, and B. J. M. Verduin, Virology 164:91-98, 1988; J. W. Roenhorst, J. M. Verduin, and R. W. Goldbach, Virology 168:138-146, 1989). Previous work in our laboratory has identified point mutations in the CCMV coat protein which result in virions with altered swelling characteristics (J. Fox, F. G. Albert, J. Speir, and M. J. Young, Virology 227:229-233, 1997; J. M. Fox, X. Zhao, J. A. Speir, and M. J. Young, Virology 222:115-122, 1996). The wild-type and mutant CCMV virions were used to correlate virion swelling with the ability of virion RNA to be translated in a cell-free wheat germ extract. Mutant virions unable to swell (cpK42R) are as infectious as wild-type virions in vivo, and the levels of translated encapsidated virion RNA are similar to those of wild-type virions in vitro. Mutant virions capable of swelling but not of disassembling in vitro (cpR26C) are noninfectious and have severely reduced levels of translation of the encapsidated virion RNA in vitro. These studies suggest that virion swelling is not required for the cotranslational disassembly of CCMV. Additionally, the results indicate that there is a pH-dependent structural transition in the virion, other than swelling, that results in the RNA's being exposed for translation in vitro. An alternative model suggesting that cotranslational disassembly of CCMV involves presentation of the virion RNA through the virion fivefold axis is proposed.     

The pathomorphological characteristics of the action on the body of the antitumor antibiotic asterin under stress conditions

The action (on the organism) of antitumour antibiotic asterine isolated from plant of family Asteraceae under stress conditions at D. K. Zabolotny? Institute of Microbiology and Virology has been pathomorphologically characterized. Asterine is stated to be able to decrease the harmful effect of stressor, preventing the expression of structural alterations in adrenal glands, cortex and lungs of stress-subjected organism. Adaptogenic effect of antitumour antibiotic is confirmed.     

Restriction maps of human adenovirus types 2, 5 and 3 for BclI, ClaI, pvul and SphI endonucleases

The sites of cleavage by BclI, ClaI, PvuI and SphI in the DNA from adenovirus (Ad) serotypes 2, 5 and 3 have been located. Certain site coordinates were in accord with nucleotide sequences already published. A small difference in size between the PvuI-E fragments from Ad2 and Ad5 confirmed the existence of a deletion in the N-terminal moiety of Ad5 hexon gene, as previously implied by interserotypic recombinants (Boursnell and Mautner, Virology 112 (1981) 198-209) and more recently by amino acid sequencing (Von Bahr-Lindstr?m et al., Virology 118 (1982) 352-362).     

Viruses in and out

A report on the twelfth Congress of Virology, part of 'The world of microbes', the joint meeting of the three divisions of the International Union of Microbiological Societies, Paris, France, 27 July to 1 August 2002.     

Comparison studies of the structural stability of rabbit prion protein with human and mouse prion proteins

Background: Prion diseases are fatal and infectious neurodegenerative diseases affecting humans and animals. Rabbits are one of the few mammalian species reported to be resistant to infection from prion diseases isolated from other species (I. Vorberg et al., Journal of Virology 77 (3) (2003) 2003-2009). Thus the study of rabbit prion protein structure to obtain insight into the immunity of rabbits to prion diseases is very important.Findings: The paper is a straight forward molecular dynamics simulation study of wild-type rabbit prion protein (monomer cellular form) which apparently resists the formation of the scrapie form. The comparison analyses with human and mouse prion proteins done so far show that the rabbit prion protein has a stable structure. The main point is that the enhanced stability of the C-terminal ordered region especially helix 2 through the D177-R163 salt-bridge formation renders the rabbit prion protein stable. The salt bridge D201-R155 linking helixes 3 and 1 also contributes to the structural stability of rabbit prion protein. The hydrogen bond H186-R155 partially contributes to the structural stability of rabbit prion protein.Conclusions: Rabbit prion protein was found to own the structural stability, the salt bridges D177-R163, D201-R155 greatly contribute and the hydrogen bond H186-R155 partially contributes to this structural stability. The comparison of the structural stability of prion proteins from the three species rabbit, human and mouse showed that the human and mouse prion protein structures were not affected by the removing these two salt bridges. Dima et al. (Biophysical Journal 83 (2002) 1268-1280 and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 101 (2004) 15335-15340) also confirmed this point and pointed out that “correlated mutations that reduce the frustration in the second half of helix 2 in mammalian prion proteins could inhibit the formation of PrP^Sc”.     

Study of the immunomodulating properties of antibiotics derived from higher plants

Investigations on screening of immunomodulating substances performed at the Antibiotic Department of the Institute of Microbiology and Virology of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR were analyzed. The analysis and detailed study of a screened antibiotic performed by the author showed that it was promising to use higher plants as organisms producing immunomodulators. A methodical approach was developed and recommended and graphs for screening immunomodulating agents of various origin were proposed.     

Besprechungen

Book reviews in this article:
Methods in Virology , herausgegeben von R. M aramorosch und H. K oprowski .
Formen und Medianismen der Übertragung von Pflanzenviren . Verlag Paul Parey.     

Review of "Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching" by Michael Greger

This is a retraction of the article submitted by Zhang et al. Virology J 2007, 4:92