Fluorescent Ferrets

Studying diseases in animals is an essential vehicle for driving forward our understanding of human illness. Ideally, we observe a human disease in an infected animal, but when that’s not possible it can also be hugely valuable to delve into the details of how ailments specific to a species take hold, and then apply these findings to human conditions. Canine distemper virus is a morbillivirus that affects ferrets just like measles does humans. To investigate its mechanisms of infection and transmission, researchers pioneered a particularly pretty, new technique. They infected ferrets with three versions of the virus, identical in every way except that each glowed a different colour, all on display here in a single white blood cell. The result was a spectacular display of virus competition, revealing the subtleties of how the virus takes hold depending on how it enters the body, and which ones go on to infect neighbouring ferrets. A useful tool to ferret out the details of virus behaviour.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Image from work by Rory D. de Vries and colleagues
• Department of Viroscience, Postgraduate School of Molecular Medicine, Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, The Netherlands and Department of Microbiology, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA
• Image originally published under a Creative Commons Licence (BY 4.0)
• Published in PLOS Pathogens, May 2017