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Concept

Introduction to viruses

Related publications (25)

Waterborne Virus Transport and Risk Assessment in Lake Geneva Under Climate Change

Tamar Kohn, Chaojie Li

Climate changes influence lake hydrodynamics and radiation levels and thus may affect the fate and transport of waterborne pathogens in lakes. This study examines the impact of climate change on the fate, transport, and associated risks of four waterborne ...

2024

Stability of influenza A virus in droplets and aerosols is heightened by the presence of commensal respiratory bacteria

Athanasios Nenes, Tamar Kohn, Kalliopi Violaki, Ghislain Gilles Jean-Michel Motos, Aline Laetitia Schaub, Shannon Christa David, Walter Hugentobler, Htet Kyi Wynn, Céline Terrettaz, Laura José Costa Henriques

Aerosol transmission remains a major challenge for control of respiratory viruses, particularly those causing recurrent epidemics, like influenza A virus (IAV). These viruses are rarely expelled alone, but instead are embedded in a consortium of microorgan ...

American Society for Microbiology2024

Comparison of Three Viral Nucleic Acid Preamplification Pipelines for Sewage Viral Metagenomics

Tamar Kohn, Xavier Fernandez Cassi

Viral metagenomics is a useful tool for detecting multiple human viruses in urban sewage. However, more refined protocols are required for its effective use in disease surveillance. In this study, we investigated the performance of three different preampli ...

2024

Peptide-based virucidal drugs

Francesca Olgiati

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, viruses were not a major priority for the scientific community. Today, many events have changed the world and the importance of studying viruses, vaccines, and antiviral drugs is fully appreciated. The development of effective ...

EPFL2024

Surfactant Treatment for Efficient Gene Detection of Enteric Viruses and Indicators in Surface Water Concentrated by Ultrafiltration

Shotaro Torii

The hollow fiber ultrafiltration (HFUF)-based microbial concentration method is widely applied for monitoring pathogenic viruses and microbial indicators in environmental water samples. However, the HFUF-based method can co-concentrate substances that inte ...

SPRINGER2023

Numerical simulation of the fate, transport and public health risks of enteric viruses in Lake Geneva

Chaojie Li

Lakes are a fundamental feature of nature with brilliance, profoundness and complexity. Various of physical, chemical and biological changes take place three dimensionally in deep lakes, regulated by complicated boundary conditions. To understand and predi ...

EPFL2023

Multivalent Virucidal Antivirals: Synthesis, Mechanisms of Action, and Immune-stimulating Effects

Yong Zhu

Viruses initiate invasion by binding to cell surface glycoproteins. Materials mimicking the carbohydrate motifs of these glycoproteins, such as heparan sulfate (HS) and sialic acid (SA) can block viral attachment and inhibit the infection. Multivalent disp ...

EPFL2023

Susceptibility of enveloped and non-enveloped viruses to ultraviolet light-emitting diode (UV-LED) irradiation and implications for virus inactivation mechanisms

Shotaro Torii

Ultraviolet (UV) light-emitting diodes (UV-LEDs), a disinfection technology, efficiently inactivate pathogens in water. However, the assessment of UV-LED treatment and the mechanisms of UV inactivation on viruses (especially enveloped viruses) are limited. ...

ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY2023

Expiratory Aerosol pH: The Overlooked Driver of Airborne Virus Inactivation

Athanasios Nenes, Tamar Kohn, Kalliopi Violaki, Ghislain Gilles Jean-Michel Motos, Aline Laetitia Schaub, Shannon Christa David, Walter Hugentobler

Respiratory viruses, including influenza virus and SARS-CoV-2, are transmitted by the airborne route. Air filtration and ventilation mechanically reduce the concentration of airborne viruses and are necessary tools for disease mitigation. However, they ign ...

2023

High-content, arrayed compound screens with rhinovirus, influenza A virus and herpes simplex virus infections

Gerardo Turcatti, Fabien Kuttler

Viruses are genetically and structurally diverse, and outnumber cells by orders of magnitude. They can cause acute and chronic infections, suppress, or exacerbate immunity, or dysregulate survival and growth of cells. To identify chemical agents with pro- ...

2022

Waterborne virus transport and the associated risks in a large lake

Tamar Kohn, Timothy R. Julian, Xavier Fernandez Cassi, Chaojie Li

Waterborne enteric viruses in lakes, especially at recreational water sites, may have a negative impact on human health. However, their fate and transport in lakes are poorly understood. In this study, we propose a coupled water quality and quantitative mi ...

2022

Identification of broad anti-coronavirus chemical agents for repurposing against SARS-CoV-2 and variants of concern

Gerardo Turcatti, Fabien Kuttler

Endemic human coronaviruses (hCoVs) 229E and OC43 cause respiratory disease with recurrent infections, while severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-CoV-2 spreads across the world with impact on health and societies. Here, we report an image-based multicy ...

2022

Toward biocontrol of waterborne pathogens: contributions of protists to virus removal and associated mechanisms

Margot Ninon Lauren Olive

Human viruses are widespread in the water environment and pose a risk to human health. Wastewater effluents represent the main source of viruses discharge in the environment, leading to contamination of aquatic ecosystems. Viral pathogens can persist on th ...

EPFL2022

Two defence systems eliminate plasmids from seventh pandemic Vibrio cholerae

Melanie Blokesch, David William Adams, Milena Jadwiga Jaskolska

Horizontal gene transfer can trigger rapid shifts in bacterial evolution. Driven by a variety of mobile genetic elements—in particular bacteriophages and plasmids—the ability to share genes within and across species underpins the exceptional adaptability o ...

2022

Novel broad-spectrum virucidal antivirals

Matteo Gasbarri

The current COVID-19 pandemic has showed the threats that viruses can cause to the whole world. Over 200 million infections and over 4.5 million deaths and enormous socio-economic impact were the output of the emergence of a single new pathogen: SARS-CoV-2 ...

EPFL2021

The influence of human genetic variation on Epstein–Barr virus sequence diversity

Jacques Fellay, Christian Hammer, Dylan Lawless, Olivier Noël Marie Naret, Sina Rüeger

Epstein–Barr virus (EBV) is one of the most common viruses latently infecting humans. Little is known about the impact of human genetic variation on the large inter-individual differences observed in response to EBV infection. To search for a potential imp ...

Nature Research2021

Highly Potent Host-Specific Small-Molecule Inhibitor of Paramyxovirus and Pneumovirus Replication with High Resistance Barrier

Gerardo Turcatti, Marc Chambon, Damiano Banfi, Jonathan Patrice Vesin

Multiple enveloped RNA viruses of the family Paramyxoviridae and Pneumoviridae, like measles virus (MeV), Nipah virus (NiV), canine distemper virus (CDV), or respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), are of high clinical relevance. Each year a huge number of live ...

AMER SOC MICROBIOLOGY2021

Advances in the development of entry inhibitors for sialic-acid-targeting viruses

Francesco Stellacci, Matteo Gasbarri, Özgün Kocabiyik

Over the past decades, several antiviral drugs have been developed to treat a range of infections. Yet the number of treatable viral infections is still limited, and resistance to current drug regimens is an ever-growing problem. Therefore, additional stra ...

ELSEVIER SCI LTD2021

Update on Interfacial Charge Transfer (IFTC) Processes on Films Inactivating Viruses/Bacteria under Visible Light: Mechanistic Considerations and Critical Issues

Juan Kiwi, Sami Rtimi

This review presents an update describing binary and ternary semiconductors involving interfacial charge transfer (IFCT) in composites made up by TiO2, CuO, Ag2O and Fe2O3 used in microbial disinfection (bacteria and viruses). The disinfection mechanism, k ...

2021

Adaptation of Human Enterovirus to Warm Environments Leads to Resistance against Chlorine Disinfection

Tamar Kohn, Timothy R. Julian, Anna Carratala Ripolles, Virginie Bachmann

Sunlight, temperature, and microbial grazing are among the environmental factors promoting the inactivation of viral pathogens in surface waters. Globally, these factors vary across time and space. The persistence of viral pathogens, and ultimately their e ...

2020