Human rhinoviruses (RVs) of the A, B, and C species are defined agents of the common cold. But more than that, RV-A and RV-C are the dominant causes of hospitalization category infections in young children, especially those with asthma. The use of cadherin-related family member 3 (CDHR3) by RV-C as its cellular receptor creates a direct phenotypic link between human genetics (G versus A alleles cause Cys529 versus Tyr529 protein variants) and the efficiency with which RV-C can infect cells. With a lower cell surface display density, the humanspecific Cys529 variant apparently confers partial protection from the severest virusinduced asthma episodes. Selective pressure favoring the Cys529 codon may have coemerged with the evolution of RV-C and helped shape modern human genomes against the virus-susceptible, albeit ancestral Tyr529.KEYWORDS rhinovirus C, asthma, cadherin structure, common cold, paleogenetics " A lmost everyone has suffered at one time or another, from the sneezing, sniffling, watery-eyed misery of a good old-fashioned common cold. The culpable agent in many cases is a rhinovirus, one of the small, positive-sense RNA-containing picornaviruses, whose very name evokes images of a runny nose." A little over 30 years ago, I started a minireview (1) with that exact statement in a technical article discussing the structure considerations behind experimental failure of peptide-based vaccine directions (quite in vogue at the time) to "cure" the common cold. In the ensuing decades, disappointment, echoing truth, was presaged by the final lines of that review. "Sadly this means that until someone has a better idea, the best advice when you have the sniffles is to stay in bed, drink plenty of liquids and call your doctor in the morning. It will be some time before we can cure the common cold."
RV-A AND RV-BIn 1985, the atomic structure of the first rhinovirus (RV), B14, was published (2), and there was great hope in the clinical world that the new data would lead to effective antivirals and vaccines, ridding the United States (alone) of ϳ62 million cases each year of RV-caused colds, which are by far the leading cause of lost work days (adults) and school time (children). The Protein Data Bank (PDB) now has records of Ͼ70 iterations of RV structures (35 for B14 alone) documenting a myriad of receptor and immunogenic complexes, as well as putative antiviral drug interactions. With these data, combined with deep sequencing efforts and phylogenetic considerations, spectacular advances (reviewed in reference 3) have indeed been made in our understanding of the physical and genetic characteristics of these viruses. The canonical isolates in the rhinovirus A (RV-A) and RV-B species cluster as distinct clades in the Enterovirus genus (Picornaviridae), with members sharing Ͼ70% amino acid identity over the nonstructural regions of their polyproteins (ϳ2,150 amino acids [aa]). Within species, further subdivision into genotypes (Ͼ85% nucleotide identity in key capsid regions) is reasonably synonymous with expe...