Microbiologists Patrick Moreira and Purificación López-García, together with virologists Arturo Ludmir and Lynn Enquist, are at the center of a sharp debate over whether viruses count as living ...

For much of modern biology, scientists argued that viruses are not alive, pointing to a basic limitation: they cannot make proteins on their own and must depend entirely on the cells they infect for ...

Genetics tools have advanced significantly in recent decades, and have allowed scientist to sequence all of the genetic ...

A giant virus discovered in Japan is adding fuel to the provocative idea that viruses helped create complex life. Named ushikuvirus, it infects amoebae and shows unique traits that connect different ...

The COVID-19 pandemic led to heightened public interest in learning about viruses and how they can cause diseases. There has been a lot of focus on communicating virology concepts to the general ...

In a new study, published in Cell, researchers describe a newfound mechanism for creating proteins in a giant DNA virus, comparable to a mechanism in eukaryotic cells. The finding challenges the dogma ...

While largely unnoticed, phages do not harm humans. On the contrary, these viruses are gaining increasing popularity as biomedicines to eradicate pathogenic bacteria, especially those associated with ...

When scientists sent bacteria-infecting viruses to the International Space Station, the microbes did not behave the same way they do on Earth. In microgravity, infections still occurred, but both ...

Plant viruses represent a major threat to global food production and security, with an estimated burden of approximately 30 billion USD dollars per year. Despite their economic importance, viral ...

A few months into his postdoctoral research at Baylor College of Medicine in 2021, Rafael Michita made a curious observation. Peering at Zika viruses infiltrating placenta cells under a microscope, he ...