Behind the Paper
The real stories behind the latest research papers, from conception to publication, the highs and the lows
Unconventional transmission mode of the delta virus
The origin of hepatitis D virus (HDV) is currently unknown. HDV is described as an infectious agent that depends on hepatitis B virus (HBV) for envelopment and transmission of its ribonucleoprotein (RNP); yet, as shown in this study, HBV-unrelated viruses, including hepacivirus and flaviviruses, are also able to propagate HDV in vitro and in humanized mice.
The quest to organize the prokaryotic virosphere
A rigorous classification system is foundational for biology. However, viruses offer particularly problematic classification challenges. This is because in any gram of soil or milliliter of seawater there can be many millions to billions of viruses. We can only recently “see” them (using molecular methods) and they are all busy exchanging genes between each other and with their hosts in ways that paradigms suggest should undermine any genome-based taxonomy. However, we wanted to ask the question of whether simply looking at shared genes between viruses using networks could get us on the right track towards organizing the mostly unknown and unmapped viral sequence space.
