MERS-CoV particles on camel epithelial cells.NIAID IN COLLABORATION WITH COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITYViruses infect just about every living organism, be it man, mouse, flea, or bacterium. These parasites cannot reproduce in isolation: they need to get inside the hosts’ cells. That’s why virologists need cell cultures, but to wield those cultures well they must understand both viruses and host cells.
It’s not as simple as tossing the two together in a flask or petri dish, notes Charu Kaushic, a professor at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. As a postdoc, she studied the innate immune system using epithelial cells from the human female reproductive tract. When she started her own lab, Kaushic decided to investigate how the sexually transmitted viruses HIV and herpes simplex 2 interact with those same cell types. Establishing the cell culture system—completely characterizing the cells, working out viral dosing and readouts, and achieving reproducible, publishable results—took thee years (reviewed in Methods, 55:114-21, 2011).
There are several reasons virologists culture cells, says Marshall Bloom, associate director for science management at Rocky Mountain Laboratories, a division of NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious ...
