Scientists have found a new way with which Ebola virus enters cells; Using live scanning electron and high-resolution 3D-microscopy, Dr. Shtanko and her team showed that Ebola infected cells using a tunneling nanotubes containing viral particles to infect other cells.
Originally, scientists thought that Ebola uses the general model of infection, where after replication, the virus is released into the body to continue infecting other cells. However, tDr. Shtanko and her team suggested a new method: Ebola-infected cells enhance the formation of tunneling nanotubes, which transferred viral particles to other cells.
Not only was the full virus not required to trigger tunneling (only small sections of proteins coding for individual proteins were needed), more importantly, this phenomena occurred in cells undergoing treatment with entry inhibitors or treatments for the virus. Currently, how the particles are transmitted still remains unknown, yet the team plans to continue looking for answers using laser micro-dissection, mass spectroscopy and and low-abundance RNA seq.
Dr. Shtanko will also explore whether similar viruses such as Sudan and Marbug exploit similar entry mechanisms.
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