Herpes

The herpes simplex virus-1 can sometimes cause a dangerous brain infection. Combining an anti-inflammatory and an antiviral could help in these cases, report scientists with the Rajewsky and Landthaler labs and the Organoid Platform at the Max Delbrück Center in “Nature Microbiology.”

In order to put their genetic blueprints into action, human cells need RNA-binding proteins. Markus Landthaler observes these proteins while they interact with RNA – in order to understand how they work, and how to make use of them.

Viruses come and go – most of the time, at least. Some, however, stay around forever. A team led by Markus Landthaler at the MDC intends to find out what enables viruses to set up home permanently in a host, as part of the DFG Research Unit DEEP-DV.

VRAC/LRRC8 chloride channels do not only play a decisive role in the transport of cytostatics, amino acids and neurotransmitters. They can also transport the important messenger substance cGAMP from cell to cell and thus strengthen the immune response to infections with DNA viruses.

New insights into preventing herpes infections have been published in Nature Communications. Researchers from the Berlin Institute for Medical Systems Biology (BIMSB) at the MDC used single-cell RNA sequencing to better understand the viral infections.

It only takes a few lines of code to corrupt a computer's files and the vast network of machines it...