Electrical Interference

A lost bee buzzing around a room is a minor annoyance, but if it inadvertently flies up your sleeve, it becomes a much bigger problem. Similarly, adenoviruses often have minor effects on the body, sometimes causing a bout of the common cold, but can do serious, even fatal, damage if they make it to the heart. To investigate this severe impact, researchers infected human heart cells with the virus in the lab. They found the virus assembles into honeycomb arrays (pictured using electron microscopy) to replicate, and interferes with the electrical signalling between cells by commandeering the channels that join them together. These channels transmit electrical signals that allow the millions of heart cells to coordinate and beat in time. Even worse, the virus prevents the growth of replacement channels, preventing any mitigation of the problem. Could we use the virus’ techniques to take back control and develop new treatments for offbeat hearts?

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 Patrick J. Calhoun and colleagues
• Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC, Roanoke, VA, USA
• Image contributed and copyright held by Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at Virginia Tech
• Research published in the FASEB Journal, June 2020