Smuggler’s Tunnel

Imagine a wanted criminal sneaking through a secret tunnel to avoid risking detection above ground. That’s what some forms of the flu virus do, spreading directly between cells via connecting tunnels rather than (or in addition to) their usual dissemination tactic of forming particles on the cell surface and spraying out in search of new targets. This direct transport is not well understood, but a new study has identified a smuggler enabling the movement: a protein called Rab11a, already known to help virus genetic material reach the cell surface to be packaged for ejection. The researchers saw that infected cells (left) lacking Rab11a connected to uninfected cells and Rab11a (green) migrated across to enable the movement of virus material (red), showing bidirectional shuffling. The virus can evade the body’s defences using this route of expansion, so understanding how to block the way could help keep the virus at bay.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Image from work by Ketaki Ganti and colleagues

Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA, USA

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in PLOS Pathogens, September 2021

Acting Mature

Viruses spread through our bodies in similar ways to other mammals, but we can also learn from infected insects and plants too. Here, researchers investigate the structure of virus-like particles similar to the insect virus Nudaurelia capensis omega using plant cells as a sort of natural virus factory. During infection, a virus breaks open its protective case known as a capsid and injects genetic material into the host cell, which is then 'tricked' into making many copies of the virus, including new capsids. It’s during this stage – how the capsid matures from an earlier structure (called a procapsid) into a capsid capable of infection – that scientists want to investigate. The team compare molecular details spotted in cryo-electron microscopy images, to those of mature capsids, finding structural changes that may one day be exploited as weaknesses to stop a viral spread.

Written by John Ankers

Image from work by Roger Castells-Graells and colleagues

Department of Biological Chemistry, John Innes Centre, Colney, UK

Image copyright held by the original authors

Research published in Communications Biology, May 2021

Viral videos: financial reality trumps ethics?

What happens when you have a video go seriously viral?

A media frenzy ensued and ultimately Kim’s video was seen by tens of millions of people around the world. A slew of news organisations sought Kim’s permission to use the footage, many of them offering money for an exclusive deal. She signed a contract with one of them, a company called ViralHog. That agreement meant that Kim was no longer…

8 questions about shareable content

Paul Bradshaw does an interesting thing in sharing his answers to student questionnaires on his site. It’s interesting, because sometimes the questions are as indicative of the mindset amongst students as the answers are about the rest of us. So, here’s a recent questionnaire I filled in for an LCC student…

1- Could you briefly introduce yourself, what you do, your area of expertise and how long…

Zika Virus Could Spread In The Coming Months – WHO Warns

World Health Organisation(WHO) has said that Zika virus is expected to spread in Europe within the next few months, although it has classified the risk of an outbreak at low to moderate.

The mosquito-borne viruswhich began a viral spread last year in Brazil and has been detected in more than 50 countries. It has been linked to thousands of cases of microcephaly, a rare…