• Question: What is involved in the process of studying new viruses?

    Asked by andrei to Katy on 21 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Katy Brown

      Katy Brown answered on 21 Jun 2013:

      When we find a new virus, we want to find out everything we can about it. The viruses I study are unusual in that they don’t cause any harm, so I don’t need to worry about stopping the virus infecting anything else. I compare the DNA from the virus to all the other viruses of the same type, to see which it is most similar to. Then I look in other, related animals to see if they have the virus too. I can work out by looking at the genes of the virus how long ago it was around.

Comments

  • Photo: PB

    PB commented on :

    First and foremost we try and find out what the new virus most resembles. Almost everything we find has a known relative we already know about, that’s a huge clue. Most new viruses come from animals (zoonoses), so which one is always a first question. Often the study of a new virus comes down to – can we grow it? can we kill it? can we make a vaccine for it?
    But equally important and often overlooked,- what can we learn from it? It is amusing that most of our knowledge of how our immune system works normally comes from looking at how viruses and other pathogens subvert it