Forty years with coronaviruses

Weiss, Susan R.

Coronavirus researchers encompassed a small community in the late 1970s and early 1980s. As I was finishing my postdoctoral training with J. Michael Bishop and Harold Varmus at the University of California, San Francisco, working on the RNAs of avian sarcoma virus (Weiss et al., 1977) , I realized I didn't want to continue working in that field. In reading the literature, I came upon coronaviruses as an attractive topic, with so much possible. The model coronavirus, mouse hepatitis virus (MHV), was easy to grow in tissue culture in the laboratory and also provided compelling mouse models for human disease, especially those of the liver and the central nervous system. Julian Leibowitz, then at the University of California, San Diego, working on MHV, very generously shared his viruses and cells with me. Julian and I worked together at that time and have been friends and collaborators for the past 40 yr. It was not until much later that I appreciated the great gift of time Mike Bishop gave me to start my own future research while still in his laboratory.