Facing Down the World's Deadliest Pathogens in a BSL4 Lab

Ebola, smallpox, plague—the rogue’s gallery of highly infectious deadly pathogens is frighteningly long and their potential for havoc is great, which is why they can only be studied within the tightly controlled confines of a biosafety level 4 (BSL4) facility. The precautions make work in a BSL4 extremely demanding, slow and physically taxing, which is one reason such research lags behind studies of less-lethal organisms. 

An Australian research team, however, recently reached a milestone when it became the first to screen and catalogue all of the genes activated by a BSL4 pathogen when it infects human cells. Their focus was the obscure but deadly Hendra virus, which causes respiratory disease in horses and can cross over into humans; they recently published their findings in PLoS Pathogens.

The researchers used siRNA—small bits of synthetic RNA employed to silence an individual gene—in cells placed in the well of a microarray plate, then exposed the cells to the virus and examined where the Hendra thrived and where it died. Little or no virus in a well meant that the siRNA-suppressed gene was important for viral replication, explains molecular biologist Cameron Steward, who led the effort at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), Australia’s national science agency.                                                                                  see more at: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/facing-down-the-world-s-deadliest-pathogens-in-a-bsl4-lab/