Publications related to Virology

Benchmarking informatics approaches for virus discovery: caution is needed when combining in silico identification methods

Understanding the ecological impacts of viruses on natural and engineered ecosystems relies on the accurate identification of viral sequences from community sequencing data. To maximize viral recovery from metagenomes, researchers frequently combine viral ...

Amer Soc Microbiology2024

Convalescent human plasma candidate reference materials protect against Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever virus (CCHFV) challenge in an A129 mouse model

Crimean-Congo Haemorrhagic Fever Virus (CCHFV) is spread by infected ticks or direct contact with blood, tissues and fluids from infected patients or livestock. Infection with CCHFV causes severe haemorrhagic fever in humans which is fatal in up to 83 % of ...

Elsevier2024

Virucidal compositions and use thereof

Francesco Stellacci

The invention relates to substituted cyclodextrin (CD) compounds having C9 to C25 optionally substituted alkyl-based linker groups, which irreversibly inhibit viruses and are useful in the treatment of viral infections. While the compounds of the invention ...

2023

Viral diversity is linked to bacterial community composition in alpine stream biofilms

Tom Ian Battin, Hannes Markus Peter, Paraskevi Pramateftaki, Meriem Bekliz

Biofilms play pivotal roles in fluvial ecosystems, yet virtually nothing is known about viruses in these communities. Leveraging an optimized sample-to-sequence pipeline, we studied the spatiotemporal turnover of dsDNA viruses associated with stream biofil ...

Springer2022

Waterborne virus transport and the associated risks in a large lake

Tamar Kohn, Xavier Fernandez Cassi, Chaojie Li, Timothy R. Julian

Waterborne enteric viruses in lakes, especially at recreational water sites, may have a negative impact on human health. However, their fate and transport in lakes are poorly understood. In this study, we propose a coupled water quality and quantitative mi ...

2022

Genotype-Dependent Kinetics of Enterovirus Inactivation by Free Chlorine and Ultraviolet (UV) Irradiation

Tamar Kohn, Shotaro Torii

Inactivation kinetics of enterovirus by disinfection is often studied using a single laboratory strain of a given genotype. Environmental variants of enterovirus are genetically distinct from the corresponding laboratory strain, yet it is poorly understood ...

2022

Microfluidic characterisation reveals broad range of SARS-CoV-2 antibody affinity in human plasma

Didier Trono, Priscilla Turelli, Marc Emmenegger

The clinical outcome of SARS-CoV-2 infections, which can range from asymptomatic to lethal, is crucially shaped by the concentration of antiviral antibodies and by their affinity to their targets. However, the affinity of polyclonal antibody responses in p ...

LIFE SCIENCE ALLIANCE LLC2022

Size and duration of COVID-19 clusters go along with a high SARS-CoV-2 viral load: A spatio-temporal investigation in Vaud state, Switzerland

Stéphane Joost, Séverine Vuilleumier Varisco, Anaïs Laurence Ladoy, Idris Guessous, Onya Opota

To understand the geographical and temporal spread of SARS-CoV-2 during the first documented wave of infection in the state of Vaud, Switzerland, we analyzed clusters of positive cases using the precise residential location of 33,651 individuals tested (RT ...

2021

A high-content image-based drug screen of clinical compounds against cell transmission of adenovirus

Gerardo Turcatti, Fabien Kuttler

Human adenoviruses (HAdVs) are fatal to immuno-suppressed individuals, but no effective anti-HAdV therapy is available. Here, we present a novel image-based high-throughput screening (HTS) platform, which scores the full viral replication cycle from virus ...

2020

Biological fluid dynamics of airborne COVID-19 infection

Andrea Rinaldo

We review the state of knowledge on the bio-fluid dynamic mechanisms involved in the transmission of the infection from SARS-CoV-2. The relevance of the subject stems from the key role of airborne virus transmission by viral particles released by an infect ...

2020

Benchmarking protocols for the metagenomic analysis of stream biofilm viromes

Tom Ian Battin, Hannes Markus Peter, Jade Brandani, Massimo Bourquin, Meriem Bekliz

Viruses drive microbial diversity, function and evolution and influence important biogeochemical cycles in aquatic ecosystems. Despite their relevance, we currently lack an understanding of their potential impacts on stream biofilm structure and function. ...

PeerJ2019

Differences in viral disinfection mechanisms as revealed by quantitative transfection of Echovirus 11 genomes

Urs von Gunten, Tamar Kohn, Jason Robert Torrey

Virus inactivation mechanisms can be elucidated by methods which measure the loss of specific virus functionality (e.g., host attachment, genome internalization, genome replication). Genome functionality is frequently assessed by PCR-based methods, which a ...

2019

On the Analysis of Intrahost and Interhost Viral Populations: Human Cytomegalovirus as a Case Study of Pitfalls and Expectations

Jeffrey David Jensen, Sebastian Matuszewski, Susanne Petra Pfeifer

Intrahost and interhost assessments of viral diversity are often treated as measures of separate and distinct evolutionary processes, with numerous investigations reporting seemingly incompatible results between the two. For example, in human cytomegalovir ...

American Society for Microbiology2017

Viral genetic variation accounts for a third of variability in HIV-1 set-point viral load in Europe

Jacques Fellay

HIV-1 set-point viral load-the approximately stable value of viraemia in the first years of chronic infection-is a strong predictor of clinical outcome and is highly variable across infected individuals. To better understand HIV-1 pathogenesis and the evol ...

Public Library Science2017

Estimating the Respective Contributions of Human and Viral Genetic Variation to HIV Control

Jacques Fellay, Amalio Telenti, Istvan Bartha, Paul Jack Mc Laren

We evaluated the fraction of variation in HIV-1 set point viral load attributable to viral or human genetic factors by using joint host/pathogen genetic data from 541 HIV infected individuals. We show that viral genetic diversity explains 29% of the variat ...

Public Library of Science2017

Broad-spectrum Antiviral Nanoparticles : a morphological CryoEM Study on the Interaction of Nanoparticles and Viruses

Marie Müller

Viral infections affect millions of people every year, yet broad-spectrum virucidal therapies are not available. Antiviral substances in current use act on specific viral mechanisms against only a small number of viruses. Virustatic materials interfere wit ...

EPFL2017

A modeling approach to estimate the solar disinfection of viral indicator organisms in waste stabilization ponds and surface waters

Tamar Kohn, Michael Jon Mattle

Sunlight is known to be a pertinent factor governing the infectivity of waterborne viruses in the environment. Sunlight inactivates viruses via endogenous inactivation (promoted by absorption of UVB sunlight by the virus) and exogenous processes (promoted ...

Elsevier2016

Disentangling human tolerance and resistance against HIV

Jacques Fellay, Amalio Telenti, Paul Jack Mc Laren

In ecology, "disease tolerance" is defined as an evolutionary strategy of hosts against pathogens, characterized by reduced or absent pathogenesis despite high pathogen load. To our knowledge, tolerance has to date not been quantified and disentangled from ...

Public Library Science2014

Virus removal and inactivation by iron (hydr)oxide-mediated Fenton-like processes under sunlight and in the dark

Tamar Kohn, Jessica Ivana Nieto Juarez

Advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) have emerged as a promising alternative to conventional disinfection methods to control microbial water quality, yet little is known about the fate of viruses in such processes. In this study, we investigated the fate of ...

Royal Society of Chemistry2013

Photoinactivation of virus on iron-oxide coated sand: enhancing inactivation in sunlit waters

Tamar Kohn, Brian Pecson, Loïc Decrey

Adsorption onto iron oxides can enhance the removal of waterborne viruses in constructed wetlands and soils. If reversible adsorption is not coupled with inactivation, however, infective viruses may be released when changes in solution conditions cause des ...

Elsevier2012