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Transgenic crops producing insecticidal toxins are now widely used to control insect pests. The benefits of this method would be lost if resistance to the toxins spread to a significant proportion of the pest population. The primary resistance management method, mandatory in…

Motivated by the failure of current methods to control dengue fever, we formulate a mathematical model to assess the impact on the spread of a mosquito-borne viral disease of a strategy that releases adult male insects homozygous for a dominant, repressible, lethal genetic…

Over 40 cell lines are currently available from 13 ixodid and one argasid tick species. The successful isolation and propagation of several economically important tick-borne pathogens in tick cell lines has created a useful model to study interactions between tick cells and…

La Crosse virus (LACV) is a mosquito-transmitted member of the Bunyaviridae family that causes severe encephalitis in children. For the LACV nonstructural protein NSs, previous overexpression studies with mammalian cells had suggested two different functions, namely…

Bluetongue virus (BTV) is an insect-vectored emerging pathogen of ruminants with the potential for devastating economic impact on European agriculture. BTV and many other members of the Reoviridae have remained stubbornly refractory to the development of methods for the…

The prevalence and importance of microRNAs (miRNAs) in viral infection are increasingly relevant. Eleven miRNAs were previously identified in human cytomegalovirus (HCMV); however, miRNA content in murine CMV (MCMV), which serves as an important in vivo model for CMV…

Infectious bronchitis coronavirus (IBV) is the cause of the single most economically costly infectious disease of domestic fowl in the UK—and probably so in many countries that have a developed poultry industry. A major reason for its continued dominance is its existence as…

The effect of administering higher payload FMD vaccines 10 days prior to severe direct contact challenge on protection from clinical disease and sub-clinical infection was investigated in cattle using two antigen payloads (single strength and 10-fold). Regardless of antigen…

Four poll Dorset sheep and four Holstein-Friesian cattle were infected with the northern European strain of bluetongue virus (BTV), BTV-8, to assess its pathogenicity in UK breeds. The time course of infection was monitored in both species by using real-time reverse…