Kliniken &… Institute Zentrum für… Molecular… Research Area

Viruses - an Overview

Viruses are responsible for many of the world’s most serious diseases. Although viruses have been a focus of intensive research over the past two decades or so, they are still challenging agents to work with.

As obligate intracellular parasites, viruses are heavily dependent on the host cell and, therefore, have developed a whole arsenal of strategies to exploit cellular functions, to overcome innate and adaptive antiviral defense and to ascertain the production of infectious virus progeny. Many important discoveries made in the field of molecular and cell biology like RNA splicing or oncogenes were made by using viruses as model systems to study cellular functions.

Thus, modern molecular virology emerged as a novel discipline that integrates classical virology, cell biology, biochemistry and molecular biology.