The potential of gene therapy has long been hampered by the risks associated with using viruses as vectors to deliver healthy genes, but a new University of Georgia study helps bring scientists closer to a safe and efficient gene delivery method that doesn’t involve viruses.

A unique technique for analyzing the function of microRNAs developed by a Hebrew University of Jerusalem doctoral student has led to the discovery of a new mechanism by which viruses evade the human immune system. This discovery has important implications for human intervention in the battle between viruses and humans.

Researchers from the United States and Switzerland have developed mathematical and statistical tools for reconstructing viral populations using pyrosequencing, a novel and effective technique for sequencing DNA. They describe their findings in an article published May 9th in the open-access journal PLoS Computational Biology.

Viruses are masters of deception, duping their host's cells into helping them grow and spread. A new study has found that human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) can mimic a common regulatory protein to hijack normal cell growth machinery, disrupting a cell's primary anti-cancer mechanism.

The vaccinia virus has a problem: it is a giant among viruses and needs a special strategy in order to infiltrate a cell and reproduce. Professor Ari Helenius and Postdoc Jason Mercer from ETH Zurich’s Institute for Biochemistry have now discovered what this strategy is.

Researchers from the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute (VBI) at Virginia Tech and their colleagues have identified a key function of a large family of virulence proteins that play an important role in the production of infectious disease by the plant pathogen Phytophthora sojae.

Fujian Center for Disease Control & Prevention, China, reported the molecular evolution of influenza A (H3N2) viruses in Fujian Province, south of China during the period 1996ЁD2004 and demonstrated some key codons responsible for antigenic drift. The study is reported in Issue 51 (April, 2008) of the Science in China Series C: Life Science because of its significant impact.

Some of the worst threats to farm workers and farm animals such as bird flu, foot-and-mouth disease and other emerging viruses could soon be quickly identified by using a simple screening chip developed by scientists from the Institute for Animal Health, scientists will hear today at the Society for General Microbiology’s 162nd meeting being held this week at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre.

Viruses and bacterial viruses (known as phages) are among the most abundant life forms on the planet.

Scientists may gain a new insight into the relationship between viruses and their environments thanks to a new computational technology developed by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory. This technology has already been used to identify subtle differences in the metabolic processes of microbial communities.

A team led by a Purdue University researcher has achieved images of a virus in detail two times greater than had previously been achieved.

Biologists at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University have examined the complete genomes of viruses that infect the bacteria E. coli, P. aeruginosa and L. lactis and have found that many of these viral genomes exhibit codon bias, the tendency to preferentially encode a protein with a particular spelling.