Talk:Poliovirus

Stand-alone Poliovirus article

 * See Talk:Poliomyelitis for the move details. -- MarcoTolo 03:47, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Evolution of polivirus
Interesting new article on the possible evolutionary origin of poliovirus:

-- MarcoTolo 17:47, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Hmm, that is interesting. Now that life-things have slowed down a bit, I will have time to to add some of the information to the article. (But if you want to add it, do feel free to do so). Thanks for pointing it out.--DO11.10 00:09, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Synthesis
I have removed the following from the article, for now.

This is absolutely not the fault of the contributor who added it and the passage is really pretty faithful to the BBC story. There are, however, a couple of problems with including it here, just yet. Most of these issues stem from the sensationalism and simplification of the story by the mainstream news media. The first problem is that polio cannot normally infect mice, or anything but humans and apes, it needs a specific receptor that mice don't have. The mice that were used here are engineered to express the human poliovirus receptor, that is how mice were able to be infected with poliovirus. There is currently nothing in the article about the poliovirus receptor transgenic mice (I had planned to...) so just saying that mice were infected with the synthetic poliovirus and died gives the appearance of contradicting the "only humans and apes can be infected" portion of article. In short, the whole mice angle needs to be explained.

Second, the synthetic virus was not made quite so simply. Here is actually what happened: they got the genetic code of poliovirus from a "public database", they then converted the published RNA sequence to a DNA sequence, ordered short stretches of the sequence from -yes- a mail order company and layered the fragments together (this took over a year). The scientists then hired a DNA synthesis company to assemble the rest of the virus and added 19 markers to the DNA, so that they could distinguish the synthetic poliovirus from the original. They then used enzymes to convert the DNA back into RNA, its natural state. The BBC article indeed boils all of this down to "The synthesis was accomplished by following a recipe on the internet and gene sequences they obtained by mail order." As if any yahoo with a credit card and an internet connection could make poliovirus (or Ebola and smallpox) in his living room.

Third, that the "synthetic polio virus was identical to natural polio viruses" is just untrue. As I said they added 19 markers to the synthetic version so that they could identify it, which weren't supposed to alter the viruses behavior. But they did. Sure, the virus replicated, infected mice, and caused paralysis, **but** the synthetic version was between 1,000 and 10,000 times less lethal than the original virus. I wouldn't call that identical. The above can all be found in: if you have a Science account.

So while the paper they published was pretty unique and groundbreaking, the story was far more complex, and far less alarming, than was alluded to in the BBC article. I will work on including something in the article about the transgenic mice, and add the artificial synthesis bit to a more generalized section about the study of poliovirus.--DO11.10 19:49, 13 July 2007 (UTC)


 * With only a little tweaking, you could take the well-worded discussion you just wrote and stick it in.... (nicely summarized, by the way). -- MarcoTolo 20:04, 13 July 2007 (UTC)


 * If you have any ideas feel free to tweak away :) It would probably save me loads of work. --DO11.10 20:40, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Sequence?
When was it sequenced, and how long is the sequence? AxelBoldt (talk) 18:19, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Useful Applications of the Poliovirus
Would it be beneficial to add a section describing current useful applications of the virus? There is a published article from the Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology at Duke University in the PNAS (Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences) from December 2003. It describes research for a cancer treatment from a crippled strain of the virus. I haven't found more recent articles on this research but I thought it might be expanded with additional imput. 70.177.81.27 (talk) 06:49, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

A virus should not have a genus, species, and family. Viruses are not living creatures. Only living creatures have scientific names. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sojoho09 (talk • contribs) 01:07, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Poliovirus doesn't just infect humans as reported in this article?
Humans have infected other apes and monkeys with polio. And Jane Goodall reported the Polio-like infection of the Gombe chimps as it happened.

Accidental exposure to infected laboratory workers has led to poliovirus infections of chimpanzees and gorillas since the 1940s (1). Poliovirus can infect not only our closest living relatives, chimpanzees, gorillas (Gorilla gorilla), and orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) (2), but also more distantly related anthropoids like the colobus monkeys (e.g., Colobus abyssinicus kikuyuensis [=guereza]) (42). Antibodies and shed virus have also been found in recently imported animals (8), and some chimpanzees may act as symptomless carriers (2). Long-term research by Jane Goodall on wild Tanzanian chimpanzees documented the potential for transmission of poliovirus (or a similar virus) in free-ranging chimpanzee populations (43). Since no samples were collected, it is impossible to determine if the epidemic described by Goodall was part of a natural chimpanzee cycle or the result of introduction from local human populations or researchers. As poliovirus eradication efforts intensify, it may be useful to monitor virus prevalence in humans living near primate habitats.

http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/4/2/98-0202_article

Kilgh (talk) 15:57, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Suggestion for Section on Re-classification
The last paragraph in the section Origin and serotypes is confusing; I had to read it several times before it made sense to me. Since the family and genus did not change, couldn't that whole paragraph be stated as something like "In 2008 the species Poliovirus was renamed as Human Enterovirus C (under genus Enterovirus and family Picornaviridae) which includes the three known serotypes." Or am I still reading it wrong? Dfuerpo (talk) 17:18, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Paragraph regarding mutation rates and base/codon distributions
I've read the paragraph about mutation rate and base and codon distribution, in the "Origin and Serotypes" section. I can't understand what it is doing in that section. How does it relate to origin and/or serotypes? Mikiher (talk) 08:21, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

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Extinction of the Neanderthals
A possible theory for the extinction of the Neanderthal extinction was a pandemic involving one or more viruses. Probably it was due to the Poliovirus, causative agent of poliomyelitis (commonly known as polio), is a human enterovirus and member of the family of Picornaviridae.

Grammar: Spelling
Grammatically, Poliovirus should be 2 words, not 1: Polio Virus, like RNA Virus & Ebola Virus. Someone must have made a mistake by leaving out the space many years ago, it has become a scientific standard, & no one cared or dared enough to correct it.2600:1702:3790:1520:2D40:D0F0:9CE8:915B (talk) 20:04, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Science
CAUSTIVE agent and mode of transmisson of polio — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2400:1A00:B010:D035:CD60:ED52:8169:8825 (talk) 15:29, 30 March 2022 (UTC)