Virology

Bats rarely get sick from deadly viruses like Ebola and Nipah despite carrying them. Now, Whitehead Institute Founding Member Rudolf Jaenisch and colleagues have found that while the SARS-CoV-2 virus can enter bat cells, the innate immune system prevents it from replicating and hijacking the cell's machinery.

A paper from the lab of Whitehead Institute Member Rudolf Jaenisch suggests that the genetic material of SARS-CoV-2 can integrate into the host cell genome and be expressed in some patient-derived tissues.

Differently shaped RNA molecules allow HIV to express different genes from the same RNA sequence.