Disrupting viruses

Nature Methods

A technique to reversibly disrupt viral proteins is reported online this week in Nature Methods. It will allow the study of viral protein function, a prerequisite for the design of antiviral substances.

The study of viral genes essential for infection is difficult because strains with deletions or mutations in these genes fail to grow. Martin Messerle and colleagues have now tackled this problem not at the level of the gene but at the protein level. They adapted a method originally developed to induce protein instability in mammalian cells, to the large family of herpesviruses.

The technique, developed by Thomas Wandless, is based on fusing a destabilizing domain to the protein of interest. This fusion protein is immediately degraded unless the destabilizing domain is bound by a small synthetic ligand that shields the protein and allows it to exert its normal function. Removal and re-addition of the ligand allow conditional and reversible disruption of the fusion proteins.

By adapting this strategy for viruses Messerle and colleagues open the door for detailed studies of protein function in herpesviruses and other viral families.

Author contacts:

Martin Messerle (Hannover Medical School, Germany) Tel: +49 5115 32 4320; E-mail: Messerle.martin@mh-hannover.de

Analyzing evolution in the lab

Nature Methods

An approach to quickly identify the genetic mutations that help bacteria survive under selective conditions is reported online this week in Nature Methods. The method can be applied to study the evolution of microbes or pathogens.

Bacteria adapt quickly to their environment which makes them ideal organisms to study evolution on a laboratory time-scale. The challenge in these studies is twofold: first one needs to identify all differences between the original strain and the evolved strain, then one needs to determine which of these mutations is responsible for the adaptive phenotype in the evolved strain.

Saeed Tavazoie and colleagues have developed ADAM, for array-based discovery of adaptive mutations, a technology that searches entire genomes of bacterial strains to pinpoint the mutations that contribute to the phenotypic variation between an evolved strain and its parent. Importantly, ADAM allows the researchers to distinguish between adaptive and neutral mutations.

ADAM's rapid and sensitive profiling of adaptive mutations throughout the genome will also be useful for the development of customized bacterial strains for various industrial applications.

Author contacts:

Saeed Tavazoie (Princeton University, USA) Tel: 609-258-0331; E-mail: tavazoie@genomics.princeton.edu

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