from Part II - Basic virology and viral gene effects on host cell functions: gammaherpesviruses
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 December 2009
The two human gammaherpesviruses, Epstein–Barr virus (EBV), a gamma 1 lymphocryptovirus and Kaposi's sarcoma associated virus (KSHV), a gamma 2 rhadinovirus, have many features in common. They share an architecture that is typical of all members of the herpesvirus family, they share an ability to establish latency in lymphocytes, and they are both initiators or potentiators of human tumors. For the virologist some of the challenges they present are the same, in particular the relative dearth of fully permissive, easily manipulated cell culture systems for study. In this respect the many years of work on EBV provided an initial roadmap to accelerate study of KSHV. However, the strategies that the viruses use for cell infection and replication provide not only interesting reflections of common ancestry, but also interesting contrasts in adaptation to unique cellular niches in their human hosts.
Target cells for EBV
EBV can infect a variety of cell types under different circumstances, including T-cells, NK -cells, smooth muscle cells and possibly follicular dendritic cells (Rickinson and Kieff, 2001). However, B-lymphocytes and epithelial cells are its two major targets. B-cells are the primary reservoir of virus in persistently infected individuals and it is likely, although not certain, that the first cell infected in vivo is an epithelial cell. There has been some controversy over whether EBV normally infects epithelial cells during the courses of a primary infection or whether the virus infects epithelial cells only in the context of oncogenesis (nasopharyngeal carcinoma) or extreme immune dysfunction (oral hairy leukoplakia).
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.