Viral Interference

DNA defines us. Our genetic code is each person’s unique biological assembly manual. So the thought of an outside agent interfering with it is alarming, and that’s just what happens when certain viruses take hold. They inject small snippets of their own genetic information into our cells’ sequences and cause chaos. With these rogue instructions in the host DNA, cells begin to replicate uncontrollably: great for a virus trying to spread, but catastrophic for us, as this unhindered proliferation is the hallmark of cancer. The discovery of this mechanism, made by Renato Dulbecco – born on this day in 1914 – changed not just our understanding of virus-caused cancer, but of how genetic changes spark many other forms of cancer too. What’s more, the discoveries, which won Dulbecco a share of a 1975 Nobel Prize, were vital to early understanding of HIV and the first treatments for AIDS in the 1980s.

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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• Photographer unknown. Wikimedia Commons
• Image sourced from the NIH US National Library of Medicine Digital Collections
• Believed to be in the public domain