What is it about?

Pathogens manipulate their hosts to increase transmission to a new host. For example, rhinoviruses make you sneeze and are dispersed with the released aerosol droplets to a new host. This manipulation is independent of host presence. We show that a pathogen can react on the host precisely at the moment when transmission is possible i.e. when a vector or new host is present. Transferred to rhinoviruses this means that you'd only sneeze when another person is present, thus optimizing transmission.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

The great novelty of this work is that pathogens are able to determine, using their hosts as sensory organs, the optimal moment for transmission. This changes our view from pathogens forming transmission morphs randomly to one where they prepare actively for transmission

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: A virus responds instantly to the presence of the vector on the host and forms transmission morphs, eLife, January 2013, eLife,
DOI: 10.7554/elife.00183.
You can read the full text:

Read
Open access logo

Resources

Contributors

The following have contributed to this page