Abstract
If a virus is to prosper inside a living host, it needs to be able to neutralize the immune response that the host organism mounts against foreign invaders. It turns out that mammalian DNA viruses have developed a range of ingenious strategies to evade immune responses that are mediated by chemokines, a group of 50 proteins present in the mammalian circulatory system that activate adaptive immunity and control leukocyte migration. For example, their viral genomes may encode specialized G-protein coupled receptors (the targets of chemokine function) or specify the production of proteins that stimulate or antagonize the host's chemokine receptors. In essence, viruses encoding their own set of ligands and receptors can manipulate cellular signaling at will. If this alone would not suffice, yet other viruses show that an alternate strategy is to bind endogenous chemokines and thereby throw a cloak of confusion over the immune response. But how can a viral protein hijack an entire chemokine response pathway?
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