Herpes simplex virus (HSV) effects more than 80% of the world population. HSV includes HSV-1 which leads to cold sores and HSV-1 which causes genital warts How the virus works: When infected HSV can go to “sleep” le dormant in the body until an external factor such as stress, illness, or sunlight wakes up and reactivates the virus. HSV is very contagious and it is during this reactivation period is when it is most contagious. Herpes simplex virus hides from the immune system in nerve cells and sleeps. The immune cells cannot directly attach HSV without also killing the host’s nerve cells. Therefore, if they can’t find a way to kill the virus without harming the host, scientists want to find a way to find a safe way to put the virus to sleep.
Scientists at Princeton University exploring how to wake up the herpes virus from its sleep have developed a laboratory method to more naturally and calmly induce the latent mode of the herpes virus using pseudorabies virus, a herpesvirus closely related to HSV-1. First they developed a three-chamber environment to put the virus to sleep in infected nerve cells. Then, they explored ways to wake up the virus and found that the presence of a cluster of tegument proteins triggered the virus. The analogy they used was tegument protein is “like a splash of ice water on the face of the viruses” , awakening them from their sleep.
Now that scientists have found a way to wake up the virus in a lab they want to use these findings to see if the same goes in the body. This new technique serves as a great advancement in studying virus latency cycle and moderating infection. Researchers are hoping that this research could lead to the development of drugs that target viral tegument proteins to awaken or put to sleep the HSV.
Jessica Ngo
Source
https://www.livescience.com/60791-how-herpes-viruses-sleep-and-wake.html
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