The Laptev Virus

Her friends would roll their eyes and usher her off the soapbox. More disturbing were her first dates that withered when the conversation became intellectual. Discussing science, she had learned, was a great way to make a man lose interest. “Men are intimidated by smart women,” her roommate had confided. “If you want dates, you need to play dumb.”

But Sarah’s indomitable spirit refused to fold neatly into the perfect woman so many of her classmates purported to be. Thus she would return to her dorm after another sour date, gritting her teeth as the bell tower struck nine on a Saturday night.

Graduate school was more fulfilling. She had met her husband and had been briefly tempted to veer from virology by some intriguing cancer research, but had soon returned to her first passion. Now she was surrounded by people who loved to talk about the same things that she did, and she no longer had to apologize for her intelligence. She had endured a post-doctorate in Chicago under a world-renowned virologist, and when the position had opened up at the UT medical school in Houston, she had immediately applied for it.

She loved her work and could often be found discussing the subject of viruses with her graduate students. One of her favorite topics was whether viruses were alive. Sarah felt strongly that anything that could be crystallized was not alive.

“Sugar can be crystallized and turned into rock candy. Sea water could be evaporated to leave only the salt crystals. But nothing that is alive—not even the tiniest cells—can be crystallized and then rehydrated,” she would argue. “So if you can crystallize a virus, then it must not be alive.”

And yet, there were certainly many people who did not agree. “Viruses, in all their simplicity, are the ultimate parasites,” they would say, mysteriously.

“Then what about plasmids?” she would retort, her voice brimming with excitement. She loved discussing cases of infinitesimally smaller structures that were challenging the fragile boundaries of the definition of life all the time.

“They are simple rings of DNA that live inside bacterial cells, but they are separate from bacterial DNA. Their structure is even simpler than that of a virus, and although they can replicate at will, they don’t kill their host like viruses do. Plasmids can even pass between different bacterial cells, or different species of bacteria, taking valuable genetic knowledge, such as genes for resistance to antibiotics, with them. Are they alive?”

When new graduate students arrived at her lab, Sarah would quiz them extensively. Many of her students had studied microbiology in their undergraduate careers, but some were biochemists, and she had to be sure that they understood the premises of basic virology before they began working with HIV.

“Tell me how a virus works,” she would ask. If the student couldn’t answer a basic question like that straight off the bat, she would direct them to go study some more before applying to her lab.

Tally, who had now been working in Sarah’s lab for several years, had provided an excellent explanation. “When a virus gets inside a host cell, such as a bacterium, an amoeba or even a human cell, its DNA takes over the host cell’s DNA, becoming the new commander in chief.” Sarah had liked that metaphor because it made it clear that the viral DNA was in charge.

“The host cell’s DNA, which would normally be directing all cell activity is overthrown, in a coup d’état that is incontrovertible.”

Tally had actually used the word incontrovertible, just like that. Tally had the most versatile and extensive personal dictionary of anyone who Sarah had ever met, which was saying a lot for someone whose entire life had been in academia. Sarah had suppressed her smile, however, not wanting to make Tally feel self-conscious.

“As in the case of any military takeover, the first thing that the invading viral DNA does is to order the cell to stop what it was doing and instead dedicate itself to making hundreds of copies of the viral DNA and capsids. It is parasitism in its most elemental form. Then, to complete the forced bondage, the host cell is obliged, again under the direction of the viral DNA, to use its own cellular machinery to assemble the viral particles, stuffing each strand of viral DNA into the protein coat and sealing the capsid. In this manner hundreds or even thousands of new virus particles are formed, until the entire cell is filled to bursting with viral particles, and thus perishes, releasing all of the newly formed viruses to attack further cells.” Sarah had felt like applauding when Tally had finished with her description. She loved Einstein’s quote that if you couldn’t explain something simply, you didn’t understand it well, and Tally had just proven that she did understand.