The highly oncogenic alphaherpesvirus Marek’s disease virus (MDV) causes immense economic losses in the poultry industry. MDV induces a variety of symptoms in infected chickens, including neurological disorders and immunosuppression. Most notably, MDV induces transformation of lymphocytes, leading to T cell lymphomas in visceral organs with a mortality of up to 100%. While several factors involved in MDV tumorigenesis have ... Read more

Marek’s disease virus (MDV) is an alphaherpesvirus that causes fatal lymphomas in chickens and is used as a natural virus-host model for herpesvirus-induced tumorigenesis. MDV encodes a telomerase RNA subunit (vTR) that is crucial for efficient MDV-induced lymphoma formation; however, the mechanism is not completely understood. Similarly, Epstein Barr-virus (EBV) encodes two RNAs (EBER-1 and EBER-2) that are highly expressed ... Read more

Purpose of ReviewMarek’s disease virus (MDV) is a highly oncogenic alphaherpesvirus that causes various clinical symptomsincluding fatal lymphomas in chickens. The virus encodes several MDV-specific genes that play a major role in viral pathogen-esis. This review will focus on the recent advances in our understanding of how these viral factors contribute to pathogenesis andtumor formation.Recent FindingsSeveral viral factors involved in ... Read more

The telomerase RNA subunit (TR) is overexpressed in many tumors; however, the contribution of TR in cancer formation remains elusive. The most frequent clinically diagnosed cancer in the animal kingdom is caused by the highly oncogenic herpesvirus Marek’s disease virus (MDV). MDV encodes a TR (vTR) that plays an important role in virus-induced tumorigenesis and shares 88% sequence identity with ... Read more

Marek’s disease virus (MDV) is an oncogenic alphaherpesvirus that infects chickens and poses a serious threat to poultry health. In infected animals, MDV efficiently replicates in B cells in various lymphoid organs. Despite many years of research, the viral transcriptome in primary target cells of MDV remained unknown. In this study, we uncovered the transcriptional landscape of the very virulent ... Read more

Telomeres protect the ends of vertebrate chromosomes from deterioration and consist of tandem nucleotide repeats (TTAGGG)n that are associated with a number of proteins. Shortening of the telomeres occurs during genome replication, thereby limiting the replication potential of somatic cells. To counteract this shortening, vertebrates encode the telomerase complex that maintains telomere length in certain cell types via de novo ... Read more

The first outbreaks of highly pathogenic H5N1 viruses were reported in South East Asia in Guangdong China, since 15 years ago (Tang et al., 1998). Up to date, the virus was reported in more than 60 countries (OIE, 2010). Since then, the disease has become endemic in some Asian and African countries (Poetri et al., 2011). Influenza viruses are members ... Read more