The Art of War: battles between virus and host

Frieman, Matthew

As Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War, “All warfare is based on deception”. He could have easily been describing the ancient battle between virus and host rather than on the lore of Chinese warfare. A virus must infect, replicate and spread for it to survive; the host attempting to thwart it at every step of the way. This ancient battle has been waged for millions of years and has spawned an innumerable number of viruses, each with their own unique ways of trying to outsmart the host. Some viruses encode proteins that directly inhibit/degrade/alter host pathways and some simply have evolved ways to hide from the hosts detection system. The host is not passive in this battle. It has evolved complex pathways and redundant mechanisms to respond to viral interlopers.