HCMV-infected cellWikipedia, NephronHuman cells have several pathways for repairing damage to DNA, but those infected by human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) have no such recourse. Researchers at the University of Idaho have found that this virus can monopolize its host’s repair proteins, so they exclusively fix damage to the virus’s genome but not the host’s.
“If the virus co-opts the repair machinery for its own good, a cell's normal capacity to repair itself might be disabled,” said Lee Fortunato from the University of Idaho, who led the new study, published today (29 November) in PLOS Pathogens. And that’s exactly what she and her colleagues found.
HCMV can itself damage host DNA, breaking both strands of the double helix at specific points. Although the cell responds by mobilizing repair proteins, most of these repairs are never finished.
This is partly because, as Fortunato showed in earlier studies, HCMV impounds some repair proteins in its replication centers—large structures within the host nucleus where the virus reproduces itself. “I started thinking about whether the virus was absconding with what it needed for its ...
