The molecular mechanisms underlying viral pathogenesis are yet poorly understood owed to the large number of factors involved and the complexity of their interactions. Could we identify a minimal set of host transcription factors (TF) whose misregulation would result in the transcriptional profile characteristic of infected cells in absence of the virus? How many of such sets exist? Are all ort...

INTRODUCTION Spontaneous regression of cancer is defined as the partial or complete disappearance of malignant disease without treatment, or in the presence of therapy that is deemed inadequate to exert an influence on malignant disease, as composed by Tilden Everson and Warren Cole in the 1960s. It has been a topic of major interest in the field of medical and surgical oncology. It is poorly u...

CD4 down-modulation is essential for the production of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infectious particles. Disease progression correlates with enhanced viral induced CD4 down-modulation, and a subset of long-term nonprogressors carry viruses defective in this function. Despite multiple pieces of evidence highlighting the importance of this function in viral pathogenesis in vivo, to date, H...

BACKGROUND Acinetobacter baumannii is one of the most antibiotic-resistant pathogens. Defining mechanisms driving pathogenesis is critical to enable new therapeutic approaches. METHODS We studied virulence differences across a diverse panel of A. baumannii clinical isolates during murine bacteremia to elucidate host-microbe interactions that drive outcome. RESULTS We identified hypervirulen...

One of the key challenges faced by microbial pathogens is invasion of host tissue. Fungal pathogens adopt a number of distinct strategies to overcome host cell defenses, including the development of specialized infection structures, the secretion of proteins that manipulate host responses or cellular organization, and the ability to facilitate their own uptake by phagocytic mechanisms. Key to m...

A common paradigm holds that during cell-to-cell transmission, viruses behave as lone soldiers. Recently, we discovered not only that enteroviruses are transmitted via vesicles as populations of viral particles but also that this type of transmission enhances their infection efficiency (Y. H. Chen et al., Cell 160: 619-630, 2015). This mechanism could be advantageous for the overall fitness of ...

Hypertension is both a disease and a risk factor. Long-term research objectives are to understand blood pressure homeostasis and the pathogeneses of the various forms of hypertension. Short-term research objectives center around enhancing methods for detection, evaluation, treatment, and control of high blood pressure because, even in the absence of precise knowledge of the etiology of hyperten...

The M40 VSV recombinant was engineered to contain overlapping PTAP and PPxY L-domain motifs and flanking residues from the VP40 protein of Ebola virus. Replication of M40 in cell culture is virtually indistinguishable from that of control viruses. However, the presence of the Ebola PTAP motif in the M40 recombinant enabled this virus to interact with and recruit host Tsg101, which was packaged ...

Viral pathogenesis involves numerous interactions between viral and cellular factors. In recent years, the influenza virus polymerase complex has emerged as a major determinant of interspecies transmission and pathogenicity. The viral RNA-dependent RNA polymerase, in concert with the nucleoprotein, mediates transcription and replication of the viral RNA genome in the nucleus of the infected cel...

[This corrects the article on p. 144 in vol. 6, PMID: 25798132.].