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www.technology.org 2015 11052.txt.txt

#Discovery: cells unwillingly help adenoviruses Various viruses claim many lives every day and cause other nonlethal infections that can lead to serious complications. Now scientists at the University of Zurich have found that adenoviruses penetrate the cells with the help of the cells themselves. Understanding the mechanisms how virus enters the cell is beneficial for development of new antiviral agents. Adenoviruses cause variety of health problems to humans, such as eye or respiratory infections. Now scientists discovered that natural repair mechanism actually helps virus to penetrate the membrane and cause an infection. Image credit: Yale Rosen via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2. 0 Adenoviruses cause variety of health problems to humans, such as eye or respiratory infections. Now scientists discovered that natural repair mechanism actually helps virus to penetrate the membrane and cause an infection. Image credit: Yale Rosen via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2. 0 Understanding mechanisms of adenoviruses is extremely important. They cause numerous diseases, such as eye or respiratory infections, but they are used also in sciences adenoviruses are used widely in gene therapy. Scientists found out that cells unwillingly provide lipids, which help virus penetrate the cell. Lipids are used normally to repair damaged membranes. Intact membrane is essential for cell to function properly, but it may be damaged in a variety of situations. Such damage sometimes results in small pores, which lead to loss of valuable substances from the cell. Cells have necessary tools and materials to repair such damage lipids are sent to the site of the damage. However adenoviruses, as now team of scientists from the University of Zurich have discovered, use this natural repair mechanism to cause infections. Adenoviruses create small pores in the surfaces of the cell membrane as well. However, they are too small for the virus to get inside, but are large enough for the cell to recognize the damage as a threat and to activate repair mechanism. And this mechanism is used by adenovirus to trigger the infection. In the repair process ceramide lipids are formed, which enable the virus to enter the cell more rapidly. Such lipids are essential to repair the cell to prevent its death after small mechanical damage. However they cause the membrane to bend and endosomes (small bubbles of lipids and proteins) to form. Endosomes engulf extracellular material, such as nutrients, but also viruses. And so adenovirus increases the size of the lesion in the membrane, and can leave the endosome before the endosome becomes a lysosome and degrades the virus . Therefore virus gets a chance to multiply in the nucleus and starts infecting other cells as well. Stefania Luisoni, first author of the study, explained that scientists have dentified particular cellular lipids as key components for the virus to enter into cells, which is surprising as lipids have important roles in biology, but these roles are difficult to identify The researchers have identified a connection between the formation of a membrane pore by the virus and a cellular repair mechanism. It causes a positive feedback loop, which is part of the explanation for the high infection efficiency of the adenoviruses. Scientists also managed to identify a new inhibitor against the adenoviruses, which inhibits particular cellular protein and blocks the formation of ceramide lipids in the plasma membrane. All these results provide hope that science will soon manage to create new antiviral agents. New knowledge should also help with using adenoviruses in vaccination and gene therapy e

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