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When influenza viruses don’t play well with others

Influenza viruses that infect the same host can interfere with each other’s replication. This behaviour seems to result in spatial structuring of infected groups of cells in tissue, with implications for viral evolution.
  1. Mireille Farjo

    1. Mireille Farjo is at the School of Molecular and Cellular Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA.

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  2. Christopher B. Brooke

    1. Christopher B. Brooke is at the School of Molecular and Cellular Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA, and at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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Viral infections are often represented as a direct clash between a virus and its host. However, viruses that infect the same cell can also interact with each other, working jointly or in opposition. These collective interactions in viral populations are poorly understood, but are likely to be crucial in shaping infection dynamics and disease progression. Writing in PLoS Biology, Sims et al.1 reveal one consequence of inter-virus interactions: influenza virus particles can restrict each other’s spread, and, by doing so, partition a host into distinct territories of infection.

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Nature 616, 668-669 (2023)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-00983-5

References

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Competing Interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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