Some Highlights of Animal Virus Research in 1985

Abstract

For some time, the Editors of The Journal of General Virology have sought a format for presenting accounts of advances and notable events in virology, in a broader and more flexible manner than is afforded by the traditional review of a topic in depth. This article represents an experiment in such presentation. Its aim is to look at advances in virus research, and to present brief accounts of the most important and interesting work published within a calendar year. Subject to evaluation of the success of this first essay, an annual feature is envisaged.Implementation of these fine notions, however, has demanded some compromises. Virology comprises such an awesome range of techniques and objectives, with such a disparate assembly of virus types, that rigorous limits were necessary. Thus, we have confined our attention to animal viruses, and explicitly avoided any pretension to constructing a systematic review of all virology; the idea of selectivity was pre-eminent. In addition, this initial account has been very largely composed by one author, and so reflects one particular set of interests. Molecular and genome structural aspects are emphasized, and little overt attention is paid, for instance, to immunity and pathogenesis. The true high points of published research are relatively easy to identify, and their perception is probably not much affected by personal interests. The choice of lesser topics, however, is increasingly subjective; in particular, defining a cut-off point was not trivial. Our dealings are with 1985 as far as is practicable, but research advances do not really respect such clean divisions and so some flexibility has been exercised.Our final qualification concerns the nature of scientific advance: a 'highlight' is a phenomenon of a surface, and thus can exist only with an underlying structure. In our analogy, most research papers are considered part of this substratum. They also are an essential part (indeed, the major part) of overall advance, but their existence is only implicit in the present account.For this review, we consider that the major highlights of 1985 were analysis of the structures of two picornaviruses and research on the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), and these are presented first. We then describe in succession selected aspects of work on genome organization, virus gene expression, genome replication and virus proteins, and finish with two topics at the edge of virology, namely, work on scrapie and on retrotransposons. The structures of two picornavirusesThe single and definitive high point of animal virus research in 1985 was the publication of two papers on X-ray crystallographic determination of the three-dimensional (3D) virion 0000-7094 © 1986 SGM

Some Highlights of Virus Research in 1988

“…Our review of the highlights in virus research in 1988 differs from the previous highlight reviews ( McGeoch et al, 1986McGeoch et al, , 1987McGeoch et al, , 1988c in that it includes work on plant viruses as well as animal viruses. This change is an attempt to make these reviews more general and to indicate areas of similarity and contact between the viruses of different kingdoms.…”

“…The eight-stranded/~-barrel architecture was first observed with the structural proteins of small RNA viruses, and similar elements were subsequently reported for the adenovirus hexon protein (see reviews by McGeoch et al, 1986McGeoch et al, , 1987. Fuller & Argos (1987) reported that alphaviruses may also make use of this building block.…”

Some Highlights of Animal Virus Research in 1986

“…

In 1986 we published a review article entitled 'Some highlights of animal virus research in 1985', in which we attempted to summarize important and interesting research on animal viruses published in 1985 (McGeoch et al, 1986b). The limitations of the exercise were recognized: coverage was selective rather than systematic and, outside clearly pre-eminent subjects, was overtly influenced by personal scientific interests.

…”