The Thin Line Between Sickness and Health
I was 14 years old when I first read The Hot Zone by Richard Preston, a 1994 best seller detailing the horrors of hemorrhagic fever viruses like Ebola. Preston’s descriptions of scientists in hazmat suits and patients vomiting out their dark, bloody insides fascinated me. I decided then that I’d grow up to be a virologist.
Like many of my teenage dreams, that didn’t come true, but I ended up pursuing biochemistry—and I found my way back to viruses when I started my Ph.D., through what was supposed to be a “quick and easy” research project on bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria.
Viruses are the most abundant biological entity on Earth, but we struggle to categorize them. Some scientists consider viruses not fully dead, because they can copy themselves, but not fully living, either, because they need a host cell to help them do it. In living organisms, cells divide in multiple rounds, one to two to four to eight. Viruses can make thousands of copies in one round of replication. These peculiar life forms have likely been around as long as, or longer than, life on this planet. And they’re in us: According to some estimates, nearly 10 percent of our own DNA comes
