Take a look behind the scenes of a recent Future Virology editorial, entitled ‘The emerging field of endogenous retroviruses: understanding their physiological role and contribution to diseases’ as we ask author Enzo Tramontano (Università degli studi di Cagliari, Italy) about human endogenous retroviruses, whether they could be linked with disease and the future of this field.
Graham Hatfull speaks about heading up the SEA-PHAGES project and the role this has played in understanding phage diversity and evolution, in addition to commenting on a recent case where a phage cocktail was used to treat a case of Mycobacterium abscessus.
In line with our focus this month on emerging technologies, we spoke to Eugene Koonin, Senior Investigator at the National Center for Biotechnology Information, about metagenomics and how it can be used to understand more about the global virome.
All epidemically successful HIV groups started to spread in early 20th century, this perspective piece looks into the factors that enabled adaptation of SIV to be sexually transmitted among humans.
Scientists have explored how the viral genome affects the infectious potency of HIV; discovering that viruses have likely evolved to remove CG dinucleotides in order to avoid surveillance to mammalian defence mechanisms.
Researchers have applied concepts from financial mathematical models to help predict the evolution of HIV proteins with the hope this could improve vaccine design.
Researchers have demonstrated that outbreaks of dengue virus have a local structure, and hope their findings on transmission patterns could lead to better targeted interventions.
New study in mouse models suggests immune adaptation in pregnancy reduces the antiviral response allowing the influenza virus to mutate to more virulent strains and causing more severe infections.
The authors of this editorial look back over the work that has been conducted towards developing a universal vaccine for influenza.
