Microbes and chronic disease

Abstract

This edition of Microbiology Australia is addressing the issue of microbes and chronic disease. Many of the microbes dealt with in this edition are viruses, partly due to interest, but also due to the nature of viral infection, which is of a host cell parasite, often of limited genomic means. Viruses only replicate by infecting cells, and the essence of viral infection of the cell is manipulation of the cellular processes, presumably in order to increase viral replication and allow viral persistence for the duration of infection. Even viruses with shorter genomes (such as RNA viruses typically with genomes in the order of seven to 10 kilobases in length) have considerable parts of their genome dedicated to non-structural, and in some cases structural, proteins that alter cellular processes. Through encoding different messenger RNAs, and different proteins, virus families have been able to occupy distinct ecological niches, allowing them to infect the human host.