SIGNAL BROADCAST: A viral infection in the mouse olfactory bulb (cell bodies, violet; infected dendrites, green) prompts immune responses in the farthest reaches of the brain.YALE UNIVERSITY, ANTHONY VAN DEN POL
The paper A.N. van den Pol et al., “Long-distance interferon signaling within the brain blocks virus spread,” J Virol, 88:3695-704, 2014. The context A number of viruses can infect the brain by traveling up the axons of olfactory receptor neurons into the olfactory bulb. Rarely, however, do any of these viruses spread to the rest of the brain—a phenomenon of neuroprotection whose mechanisms are not well understood. The finding In mice infected with RNA-based vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) or DNA-based cytomegalovirus, researchers from Yale University found evidence of antiviral interferon-stimulated gene (IFG) expression as far away as the posterior brain, even though they could not detect any nearby virus. This distant interferon response was important for stopping the spread of infection. When the team knocked ...
