Repost re: possible reservoir for Ebola/Marburg

[Henry S. Gibbons]

Chuckles (chale at hsc.usc.edu) wrote:
: In article <3p3tdc$gv at newsbf02.news.aol.com>,
:    petermsull at aol.com (PeterMSull) wrote:
: >Forgive me for posting someone else's thoughts/writings on an important
: >subject, but I believe the ideas put forth by Walter Lundby a few months
: >back ( I save my sessions in this group for reference ) to be thought
: >provoking at least. Sometimes it takes one outside the field to see
: >something in a way in which people more "concentrated" otherwise may not.
: >So please forgive me Walter, but I think your proposal has become even
: >more relevant.
: >
: >**************************************************************************
: >*******************************
: >
: >Proposal:   the reservoir for the Marburg and Ebola Reston viruses might
: >not
: >be  in a living being but in a clay, shale or petrified wood deposit.
: >
: >--MORE--

: That is a very interesting idea.

: I agree that DNA and RNA can remain intact for a long time in clay or shale, 
: unfortunately proteins and plasma membranes do not.  Therefore, although Ebola 
: RNA could be embedded in clay, an intact viral partical could not, and Ebola 
: RNA is just another bunch of nucleotides without the rest of the viral 
: particle to get it into a host.

: Having said that, the thinking here is very good.  Conventional thoughts about 
: how Ebola works and where it lives have turned up very little.  A little 
: unconvetional thinking could go a long way.

: 		Charles Hale
: 		Biochem/USC School of Medicine
: 		chale at hsc.usc.edu

: 		"But that's my opinion,
: 		 I could be wrong."


A very interesting idea, but there is only one problem that I can think of. 
The Filoviruses are negative strand RNA viruses, which require a transcriptase
to produce the mRNA necessary for viral protein synthesis in the cell.  If only
the negative strand (from a virus particle, that is) is preserved in the clay,
no transcription could occur.  It has been documented (see Regnery et al.,
J. Virology, vol. 36 no. 2 pp. 465-469 (1980)) that the negative-sense Ebola
RNA is not infectious, whereas the complementary strand is sufficient to
cause infection.  Unless the clay could preserve the transcription machinery
of the Ebola virus (anyone care to comment on this?), the RNA could not infect
a cell on its own.

I'm not a specialist here, so take it with a grain of salt, but that's my
initial guess.  Any additional insights would be appreciated (As well as 
recent references!).

Henry S. Gibbons