The Laptev Virus

“What about HIV?” Sarah asked. It wasn’t really a trick question; she just wanted to see how deep Tally’s knowledge was before she began her research in earnest. She needn’t have worried as Tally answered swimmingly.

“HIV viruses are even more labyrinthine.”

Labyrinthine! Another lovely word!

“Instead of DNA, the double-stranded helix molecule which holds the instructions for life in all living organisms, from the simplest bacterium to the most complex mammalian cell, HIV viruses contain RNA, a single-stranded molecule that, upon gaining admittance into a host cell, must first be changed into DNA.”

Then she described reverse transcription, and how it had to be accomplished before cellular takeover could begin. “The HIV virus requires an enzyme which does not exist in any living cells: reverse transcriptase.” It was a marvelous answer.

Sarah remembered how thrilled and frightened scientists had been in the early 1980s when research on retroviruses was in its pioneer stage. The HIV virus and its kin, whose genetic material had to be changed from RNA to DNA, were fascinating.

Her professor, the same one with the icing hair who had drawn the simple virus on the green chalk board and then walked away, had said, “Not all viruses will immediately attack their host cell, of course, and there are many permutations on the mode of entrance and the exact steps which viruses take to overthrow host cell DNA. Herpes viruses, for example,” he said, stopping to take a puff on his pipe, “are quite old viruses, evolutionarily speaking, and thus have evolved to be able to lie dormant within the host cell, say, in the lip of the infected individual, for long stretches of time.

Herpes viral DNA integrates into the host cell DNA, and when the person makes new cells, the viral DNA is also copied by the human cell machinery, and each daughter cell carries its fresh copies of the virus. That’s why once someone has a cold blister, which is really a Herpes infection, it never really goes away. The virus lies dormant until the right trigger, such as a fever or exposure to the sun, frees it from the host cell DNA, awakening the monster which now assumes control of the cell. At that point, the lip cell no longer acts like a lip cell, but instead becomes a Herpes virus factory, creating thousands of copies and then erupting, spilling its contents, new viral particle clones, which infect nearby cells until the body’s defense system beats them down. Sacrificed white blood cells and destroyed tissue contribute to creating the pus-filled sore that is the Herpes blister.

It was beautiful and terrifying to think that once you got a cold sore, that viral DNA would be with you, mixing intimately with your own DNA, for the rest of your life. Up until then Sarah had always thought of infections in terms of things your body fought and then they went away. She had not realized that there was literally no way to ‘cure’ one of a cold sore. The active infection could be tamed, but the virus would be there, lying dormant, always ready to attack.

HIV viruses, instead of infecting lips like the Herpes virus, or nasal and throat passages like the flu viruses, assault the body’s immune system. In particular, the virus infects the specific blood cells responsible for mounting a defense against anything that could invade the body. It is as if a country were attacked, but instead of bombing cities, the invading army only targeted police departments, unequivocally demolishing every one of them. The citizens of the country would be fine for a little while, but with no one able to ever again police the streets, the country would slowly disintegrate from its own petty thievery and picayune acts of crime that would ordinarily have been kept under control.

This is what happened to AIDS victims. Most never perished directly as a result of having the HIV infection, but rather they succumbed to obscure cancers and diseases from which the person’s impaired immune system could no longer protect them.

Sarah sat at her office chair and forced herself back to the present. There was a meeting to organize for this afternoon. In the meantime, she would need to begin learning everything she could about dormant viruses emerging from the permafrost.

CHAPTER 5

Sarah’s meeting with Rhonda had not been an easy one, and now she had to break the bad news to her team. It wasn’t entirely bad news, she told herself as she hobbled toward the elevator. She was trying to put a positive spin on a disappointing situation, but all she could manage was that at least Rhonda trusted them enough to let them handle this new outbreak. She had loads of confidence that no other team could handle this investigation as well as hers could.

Still, having to put aside all of their work and begin a whole new project would be stressful, and she was not pleased at the prospect.

“But, we were making so much progress on AIDS research—why does she want us to turn away now?” asked Tally.