Viruses are often seen only as killers—responsible for diseases like HIV, Ebola, and influenza. But what if we told you that ...

A team from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology has discovered a new class of bacterial mobile genetic elements ...

Herpes simplex viruses (HSV) are ubiquitous, double‐stranded DNA viruses that establish lifelong infections in human hosts. Central to their cycle is the process of membrane fusion, which permits ...

Viruses outnumber humans by about 400 trillion to one, and yet pandemics are rare. Why? Why do a few viruses inflict so much damage, when the vast majority are harmless or even helpful? Those ...

Only recently appreciated as critical components of cellular functions, unstructured stretches of amino acids called SLiMs are key to viral-host interactions. During an early COVID-19 lockdown in ...

When mathematicians Leland McInnes and John Healy walked into their work’s annual “Big Dig” — a sort of classified hackathon for Canada’s version of the National Security Agency — in 2017, they were ...

Viruses can infect cells, and take them over to produce more viruses. But can viruses serve as a source of nutrition? It seems that, yes, some aquatic microbes are able tocan consume viruses and use ...

Ebola is one of the nasty viruses that can hide in the body even after a patient recovers and tests negative. It can reemerge ...

Scientists have uncovered over 200 new giant viruses lurking in ocean waters that not only help shape marine ecosystems but also manipulate photosynthesis in algae. These massive viruses once nearly ...

Late in the Middle Ages, Italian stargazers gave a name to the annual contagion that rolled around each year like clockwork.