Viruses play a major role in the functioning of ecosystems. They profoundly influence the dynamics of microbial communities, ...

A new University of California San Diego study published in Cell challenges a long-standing assumption about how animal viruses become capable of sparking human epidemics and pandemics. Using a ...

Research on bacteriophage Qβ by Charles Weissmann and colleagues in the 1970s 15 coincided with the development of quasispecies theory by Eigen and Schuster; the two investigations were carried out ...

Influenza virus infections generate antibodies that cross-react with antigenically similar viruses. However, the breadth of cross-reactivity is unclear. Here we analysed 200,000 haemagglutination ...

The Human Virome Program will analyze samples from thousands of volunteers in an effort to understand how viruses affect health. By Carl Zimmer The viruses we know best are the ones that make us sick ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Ever since viruses came to light in the late 1800s, scientists have set them apart from the rest of life. Viruses were far smaller than ...

Distinguishing between self and non-self is a critical ability of the immune system. Some pathogens have evolved proteins that resemble those of their host, a mechanism called molecular mimicry, in an ...

Using genomics, evolutionary biologists test several hypotheses on the origin of viruses. New evidence suggests they may have emerged more times than previously thought. Corroborating the virus-first ...

When people talk about the coronavirus, they sometimes describe this invisible entity as if it has a personality and even a conscience. If you ask a biology or medical student what a virus is, they ...

Viruses, as we all know, are invisibly small things that make us sick. But is that the whole story? Zoom in close enough and you’ll discover the complex, unseen world of viruses. Some do make us sick, ...