By Rachel Leeson
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In April 2022, physicians in Scotland began noticing unusual cases of acute hepatitis in the pediatric population. Once ~400 cases had amassed in places around the world, hypotheses began to develop that this illness was caused by either SARS-CoV-2, Adenovirus type 41 (AdV-41), ...
Viruses are simple: a genome packaged in a protein shell (Taylor, 2014). They’re so simple that we can’t even decide if they’re alive or not. Yet these simple, small particles have quite the outsized impact — and not just on the disease front.
The Retroviridae (commonly called retrovirus) family — of which HIV is a member — may seem like an unlikely candidate to use as a viral vector, but retroviruses have been developed into some of the most widely used tools in molecular biology. “Retroviruses” is an umbrella term ...
For safety and production reasons, multiple plasmids with many components are used to package lab grown viruses. It can be intimidating at first to look at so many plasmid maps and protocols! In reality, there are many shared components across viruses (AAV, lentivirus, etc.) and ...
In order to understand the complex wiring of the brain and the underpinnings of neurological disease, neuroscientists need to be able to probe cells and circuits without disrupting normal brain function. Chemogenetics has become a popular tool in the field as it provides a ...
In 2005, Boyden et al. described the first light-activated tool for controlling neuronal activity, channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2), a blue light-activated cation channel, from the archaebacteria Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. When exposed to blue light, this channel activates neuronal ...
Using AAV vectors in complex biological systems can be tricky at best, and downright infuriating at worst. While it is tempting to just dive right in and start injecting your virus, a successful AAV experiment starts with validation and optimization. Although there are different ...
