A virus’s goal is to infiltrate a cell and to control the cell’s protein so that the virus can replicate and infiltrate other cells. It was previously thought that a virus’s genome would have to be inside an infected cell for all of that to happen, but a new study that was published in eLife flipped that assumption by showing that a virus can split off and infiltrate multiple cells at the same time even though its genome is split apart.
Key Takeaways:
- Scientific research from France has challenged the classical view in virology that viral replication happens on the single-cell level.
- Multipartite viruses have long been known to exist, but scientists couldn’t understand how they could have evolved under the traditional model.
- The new finding that multipartite viruses operate across multiple cells raises questions as to how these viruses spread.
“Some viruses can replicate without passing all their genes into any one cell.”
Read more: https://www.quantamagazine.org/viruses-can-scatter-their-genes-among-cells-and-reassemble-20190521/
