Mortalities of the Manila clam Ruditapes philippinarum (Adams & Reeve, 1850) were reported in southern England (Kent and Poole Harbour) during late spring of 2008. In response to these reported mortalities, samples were collected from 5 sites across the south coast of England. Clams were sampled for both histology and electron microscopy. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) revealed unenvelo...

The conventional vaccines currently being used to deal with influenza are based on a virus obtained in chicken embryos or its components. The high variability of the major immunogenic surface proteins - hemagglutinin and neuraminidase-require the development of strain-specific vaccines that match the antigenic specificity of a newly emerging virus. Recombinant vaccines based on single viral pro...

Flaviviruses deliver their genome into the cell by fusing the viral lipid membrane to an endosomal membrane. The sequence and kinetics of the steps required for nucleocapsid delivery into the cytoplasm remain unclear. Here we dissect the cell entry pathway of virions and virus-like particles from two flaviviruses using single-particle tracking in live cells, a biochemical membrane fusion assay ...

Background and Aims: Influenza is one of the main respiratory infections of humans, responsible for 300,000–500,000 annual deaths world-wide. Vaccination is one of the best ways to prevent infections including influenza. Influenza virosomes are virus-like particles, which retain the cell binding and membrane fusion properties of the native virus, but lack the ribonucleoprotein (RNP). A vi...

conclusions: the recombinant baculovirus constructed in this work has proper characteristics to produce h5n1 influenza virus-like particles in sf9 cells. results: restriction map of pfastbacihnm1 plasmid confirmed the fidelity of the clone. the pcr carried out on the recombinant bacmids as template indicated that a proper homologous recombination has occurred between pfastbacihnm1 donor plasmid...

We established a plasmid-based system for generating infectious influenza virus-like particles entirely from cloned cDNAs. Human embryonic kidney cells (293T) were transfected with plasmids encoding the influenza A virus structural proteins and with a plasmid encoding an influenza virus-like viral RNA (vRNA) which contained an antisense copy of the cDNA for green fluorescence protein (GFP) flan...