Viruses are acellular infectious agents that depend entirely on host cellular machinery for replication and are therefore studied as a central topic in microbiology, virology, and infectious disease research. They consist minimally of a nucleic acid genome (DNA or RNA, single- or double-stranded, linear or circular) enclosed in a protein capsid, and in many cases a host-derived lipid envelope containing viral glycoproteins. Viral classification and research focus on genome organization, replication strategies, host range, tropism, mechanisms of cell entry and egress, immune evasion, and evolutionary dynamics, as well as their roles in pathogenesis, horizontal gene transfer, and biotechnology applications such as vectors and phage therapy.
In evolutionary biology, all life on Earth is theoretically part of a single phylogenetic tree, indicating common ancestry. This model suggests that every living organism can be traced back to a distant common ancestor. However, ...
Molecular & Computational biology
May 26, 2026
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Norwegian authorities on Tuesday announced that avian influenza has been documented in a polar bear for the first time in Europe, in the Svalbard region in the Arctic.
Ecology
May 20, 2026
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Sticking needles into arms—or rather, haunches—is often the hardest part of distributing an effective agricultural vaccine. Now, University of Connecticut researchers show in the April 15 issue of Advanced Healthcare Materials ...
Veterinary medicine
May 18, 2026
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Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biology Tübingen have shown that giant viruses long thought to exist only as fleeting, free-living particles that can embed themselves permanently in the genome of a multicellular ...
Evolution
May 18, 2026
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Gathering dust from buildings may hold promise as a more efficient way to track viral outbreaks in indoor settings, according to a new study published in Building and Environment by researchers from the Ohio State University. ...
Cell & Microbiology
May 18, 2026
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A new nanoscopy technique developed at The Australian National University (ANU) has uncovered hidden networks used for communication between cells, opening new ways to understand human diseases. Described in an article published ...
Cell & Microbiology
May 17, 2026
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Researchers from A*STAR Genome Institute of Singapore (A*STAR GIS) have developed a new method to study individual RNA molecules and reveal how their structures influence gene regulation, a fundamental process that affects ...
Biotechnology
May 15, 2026
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A CBBL research team led by Professor Balachandran Manavalan from the Department of Integrative Biotechnology at Sungkyunkwan University has developed DeepTYLCV, an accurate and interpretable artificial intelligence model ...
Biotechnology
May 15, 2026
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Viruses play a far more active role in Earth's carbon cycle than previously understood, according to new research that reveals how they infect and control microbes responsible for carbon production in some of the planet's ...
Earth Sciences
May 14, 2026
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Bacteria fend off invading viruses with molecular scissors that slice up viral DNA—a system called CRISPR that's become indispensable to gene editing. But viruses can fight back with a molecular trick that stops the scissors ...
Cell & Microbiology
May 8, 2026
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