The rhinovirus is the most common viral infectious agent in humans and is the predominant cause of the common cold. Rhinovirus infection proliferates in temperatures of 33–35 °C (91–95 °F), the temperatures found in the nose. Rhinoviruses belong to the genus Enterovirus in the family Picornaviridae.
Poliovirus, the causative agent of polio, is a serotype of the species Enterovirus C, in the family of Picornaviridae. There are three poliovirus serotypes: types 1, 2, and 3.
Har Gobind Khorana was an Indian-American biochemist. While on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, he shared the 1968 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Marshall W. Nirenberg and Robert W. Holley for research that showed the order of nucleotides in nucleic acids, which carry the genetic code of the cell and control the cell's synthesis of proteins. Khorana and Nirenberg were also awarded the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University in the same year.
Picornaviruses are a group of related nonenveloped RNA viruses which infect vertebrates including fish, mammals, and birds. They are viruses that represent a large family of small, positive-sense, single-stranded RNA viruses with a 30 nm icosahedral capsid. The viruses in this family can cause a range of diseases including the common cold, poliomyelitis, meningitis, hepatitis, and paralysis.
Howard Martin Temin was an American geneticist and virologist. He discovered reverse transcriptase in the 1970s at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, for which he shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Renato Dulbecco and David Baltimore.
Exo-α-sialidase is a glycoside hydrolase that cleaves the glycosidic linkages of neuraminic acids:
The murine leukemia viruses are retroviruses named for their ability to cause cancer in murine (mouse) hosts. Some MLVs may infect other vertebrates. MLVs include both exogenous and endogenous viruses. Replicating MLVs have a positive sense, single-stranded RNA (ssRNA) genome that replicates through a DNA intermediate via the process of reverse transcription.
Drosophila X virus (DXV) belongs to the Birnaviridae family of viruses. Birnaviridae currently consists of three genera. The first genus is Entomobirnavirus, which contains DXV. The next genus is Aquabirnavirus, containing infectious pancreatic necrosis virus (IPNV). The last genus is Avibirnavirus, which contains infectious bursal disease virus (IBDV). All of these genera contain homology in three specific areas of their transcripts. The homology comes from the amino and carboxyl regions of preVP2, a small 21-residue-long domain near the carboxyl terminal of VP3, and similar small ORFs sequences.
Deformed wing virus (DWV) is an RNA virus, one of 22 known viruses affecting honey bees. While most commonly infecting the honey bee, Apis mellifera, it has also been documented in other bee species, like Bombus terrestris, thus, indicating it may have a wider host specificity than previously anticipated. The virus was first isolated from a sample of symptomatic honeybees from Japan in the early 1980s and is currently distributed worldwide. It is found also in pollen baskets and commercially reared bumblebees. Its main vector in A. mellifera is the Varroa mite. It is named after what is usually the most obvious deformity it induces in the development of a honeybee pupa, which is shrunken and deformed wings, but other developmental deformities are often present.
Group-specific antigen, or gag, is the polyprotein that contains the core structural proteins of an Ortervirus. It was named as such because scientists used to believe it was antigenic. Now it is known that it makes up the inner shell, not the envelope exposed outside. It makes up all the structural units of viral conformation and provides supportive framework for mature virion.
Mengovirus, also known as Columbia SK virus, mouse Elberfield virus, and Encephalomyocarditisvirus (EMCV), belongs to the genus Cardiovirus which is a member of the Picornaviridae. Its genome is a single stranded positive-sense RNA molecule, making the Mengoviruses a class IV virus under the Baltimore classification system. The genome is approximately 8400nt in length, and has 5’ VG protein and a 3’ polyadenine tail. Mengovirus was isolated by George W. A. Dick in 1948, in the Mengo district of Entebbe in Uganda, from a captive rhesus monkey that had developed hind limb paralysis.
TEV protease is a highly sequence-specific cysteine protease from Tobacco Etch Virus (TEV). It is a member of the PA clan of chymotrypsin-like proteases. Due to its high sequence specificity, TEV protease is frequently used for the controlled cleavage of fusion proteins in vitro and in vivo.
Vincent R. Racaniello is a Higgins Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons. He is a co-author of a textbook on virology, Principles of Virology.
Ribosomal frameshifting, also known as translational frameshifting or translational recoding, is a biological phenomenon that occurs during translation that results in the production of multiple, unique proteins from a single mRNA. The process can be programmed by the nucleotide sequence of the mRNA and is sometimes affected by the secondary, 3-dimensional mRNA structure. It has been described mainly in viruses, retrotransposons and bacterial insertion elements, and also in some cellular genes.
Picornavirales is an order of viruses with vertebrate, invertebrate, protist and plant hosts. The name has a dual etymology. First, picorna- is an acronym for poliovirus, insensitivity to ether, coxsackievirus, orphan virus, rhinovirus, and ribonucleic acid. Secondly, pico-, meaning extremely small, combines with RNA to describe these very small RNA viruses. The order comprises viruses that historically are referred to as picorna-like viruses.
Jack Leonard Strominger is the Higgins Professor of Biochemistry at Harvard University, specializing in the structure and function of human histocompatibility proteins and their role in disease. He won the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research in 1995.
Eckard Wimmer is a German American virologist, organic chemist and distinguished professor of molecular genetics and microbiology at Stony Brook University. He is best known for his seminal work on the molecular biology of poliovirus and the first chemical synthesis of a viral genome capable of infection and subsequent production of live viruses.
Picornain 3C is a protease found in picornaviruses, which cleaves peptide bonds of non-terminal sequences. Picornain 3C’s endopeptidase activity is primarily responsible for the catalytic process of selectively cleaving Gln-Gly bonds in the polyprotein of poliovirus and with substitution of Glu for Gln, and Ser or Thr for Gly in other picornaviruses. Picornain 3C are cysteine proteases related by amino acid sequence to trypsin-like serine proteases. Picornain 3C is encoded by enteroviruses, rhinoviruses, aphtoviruses and cardioviruses. These genera of picoviruses cause a wide range of infections in humans and mammals.
Lynn Dalgarno is an Australian geneticist known for the discovery of the Shine-Dalgarno sequence with his graduate student, John Shine.
Jaye Cassandra Gardiner is an American cancer researcher at the Fox Chase Cancer Center. Her research considers the microenvironment that surrounds tumors, with a particular focus on pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. In 2022, she was the inaugural awardee of the Black in Cancer Postdoctoral Fellowship.
