Virus Traps


Virus Traps

Viruses will bind to any cell possessing the correct receptor. This leaves them vulnerable to engineered cells expressing the correct receptor, but are otherwise not viable for productive infection. In work published in Ecology Letters, we described a mathematical model to predict the effectiveness of virus traps in driving viruses to extinction. We validated the model using bacteriophage Φ6 and a naturally occurring trap host. We found that traps could indeed drive viruses to extinction. The figure below accompanied a New York Times article about the work.

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