9th dsRNA Virus Symposium

Abstract

This symposium series started in 1982 and has taken place every 3 years since, bringing together scientists from all over the world with specific research interests in viruses with a double-stranded (ds) RNA genome belonging to the families of Reoviridae, Cystoviridae, Birnaviridae, Totiviridae, Partitiviridae, Chrysoviridae, Hypoviridae and the genus Endornavirus. The meeting was attended by approximately 170 scientists, was very well organized by Henk Huismans and Duncan Steele, supported by generous sponsorship from various sources and lit up by an attractive social programme. The meeting was noteworthy as, after many years of effort, real breakthroughs in the research on reverse genetics systems for several members of the Reoviridae have occurred or are on the horizon. The meeting commenced with appreciations of pioneering work on dsRNA viruses by Wolfgang Joklik (reovirus), Daan W Verwoerd (orbivirus), and Ruth F Bishop and Ian H Holmes (rotavirus), and a keynote address by Wolfgang Joklik in which he reflected on over four decades of work on the molecular genetics of orthoreoviruses. The ‘Jean Cohen Lecture’ has recently been established in honor of the eminent French rotavirologist, who died in 2004. The inaugural lecture was delivered by Felix Rey (Institut Pasteur, Paris, France). He reviewed structural studies on the dsRNA virus capsid (birnavirus) and cores (bluetongue virus [BTV] and rotavirus [RV]), which suggested their possible evolutionary relationship and, furthermore, a relationship with the structures of singlestranded, positive-sense RNA (+ssRNA) viruses [1]. By contrast, the structure of picobirnaviruses is not an intermediate of +ssRNA viruses or other dsRNA viruses. The second part of the lecture considered the evolutionary links of enveloped viruses, which carry different classes of fusion proteins and show differences in budding [2]. The meeting was organised into eight workshops: Virus structure and assembly, Protein structure and function, Virus–cell interaction, Replication and expression, Immunity and prevention, Molecular epidemiology and emerging pathogens, Pathogenesis and pathophysiology and Rotavirus vaccines, each with one or two plenary lectures and eight to ten oral presentations. In addition, there were several poster sessions with more than 100 contributions. The following sections review some of the research progress achieved and reported at the meeting, as well as some future research directions. The selection is necessarily subjective and the rapporteur’s choice and responsibility.