Texas A&M University-Texarkana’s, Dr. Benjamin Neuman, Chair of Biological Sciences, recently published two papers relating to his research identifying new viruses and studying how viruses affect the insides of infected cells.

According to a press release, his first article appeared in the Virology Journal of Science Direct and discusses how Neuman and other scientists discovered two new viruses. The first, Aplysia abyssovirus 1, was discovered in a large swimming sea slug called the California sea hare. The new abyssovirus, while not thought to be a health risk to humans, is particularly abundant in the nerve cells of its host. The second virus, named Microhyla letovirus 1, was found in the ornamented pygmy frog. Also believed to be non-threatening to humans, it is related to coronaviruses that today cause colds as well as diseases in cows, pigs, and chickens. The full article on the discovery of the new viruses is available here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0042682218302514?via%3Dihub.

In the second paper, Neuman and the other scientists researched the ways that viruses rearrange the inside of the cells they infect. They used a virus common to chickens to study the effects of different virus proteins on host cells, and found one particular protein, nsp4, that might make a good target for drugs that prevent this type of virus from gaining a foothold in healthy cells. The research on viruses causing cell membrane rearrangement can be found at http://www.mdpi.com/1999-4915/10/9/477

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