Viral evasion of immunity is an active area of research which has attracted a lot of attention since about 1999, because of its importance to pathogenicity, host range, and its potential for intervention. This particular paper is an extension of the work that Professor Rick Randall (University of St. Andrew's) and I have been undertaking for several years.

Yes. The previous work of Professor Randall's and my group has demonstrated that paramyxoviruses are very effective at evading the interferon response by blocking signaling. In this paper, in collaboration with Professor Bob Lamb (Northwestern University), we show that paramyxoviruses also block the production of interferon. Our results show that this is a property of the V protein, and since the V protein is highly conserved between paramyxoviruses, we anticipate that our observations will be of widespread interest.

The ongoing "host-versus-virus" battle has been the subject of research for many years. The host (the animal being infected) cells make interferon when infected with a virus. The interferon is a signal which tells nearby uninfected cells to be on their guard. If a virus then tries to infect these cells its replication is impaired and this prevents the virus spreading. Our paper shows that paramyxoviruses—which are the family of viruses that include mumps and measles—promote their survival by encoding a mechanism that limits the amount of interferon produced by an infected cell.

I have been working on the regulation of interferon production since 1983, when I was a post-doc in Professor Tom Maniatis's lab at Harvard. Originally, my interest was restricted to the transcriptional aspects, but with advances in our understanding of signal transduction the potential targets for viral interference have become more obvious. I have been collaborating with a number of colleagues, notably Rick Randall, John McCauley (Institute for Animal Health), and Kenny Offermann (Emory University) to investigate the "interferon interfering" potential of a number of classes of virus. Twenty years on, I find myself knowing the virology I wished I had known in 1983!

Steve Goodbourn
Reader in Biochemistry
Department of Biochemistry and Immunology
St. George's Hospital Medical School
University of London
London , UK.