Is Virology Dead?

DiMaio, Daniel

As well as teaching us about how cells work, viruses provide us the means to manipulate cells. Virus particles are miniature, highly efficient gene delivery machines that are used in thousands of laboratories around the world to transfer genes into cells for research purposes. Viruses have also been used as vectors to treat human genetic disease and cancer and are being tested as novel vaccine platforms (15, 16) . Although it is possible to incorporate genes into chemical nanoparticles and derivatize them with peptides and antibodies to direct them to specific tissues, these are primitive contraptions, crude Model T's compared to the sleek Lamborghiniviridae. And virus-mediated gene transfer is not restricted to the laboratory or the clinic. Viruses can also transfer genes between cells in nature, opening up new evolutionary opportunities. In fact, a large fraction of our own genome originated from the remnants of ancient viruses (17) . These confrontations between viruses and cells helped mold cellular genomes over evolutionary time and have been captured in flagrante today in wild koalas, where an infectious retrovirus is becoming established in the germ line, adopting an endogenous existence (18) .