Herpes: Cytomegalovirus Hijacks Human Enzyme For Replication
Sunday, March 29, 2015 - 18:40
in Biology & Nature
More than 60 percent of the world's population is infected with a type of herpes virus called human cytomegalovirus, which replicates by commandeering the host cell's metabolism, but the details of this maneuver have been unclear. Researchers have discovered that cytomegalovirus manipulates a process called fatty acid elongation, which makes the very-long-chain fatty acids necessary for virus replication. They identified a specific human enzyme - elongase enzyme 7 - that the virus induces to turn on fatty acid elongation. "Elongase 7 was just screaming, 'I'm important, study me,'" said John Purdy, a post-doctoral researcher at Princeton and lead author of the study. read more