Re: What does a virologist do?

Ann,

I am a little worried about answering your question because there are lots of points of view about what a virologist is and someone, maybe a real virologist, might not see me as one. However, I will try to answer it anyway even though I am a physician, pathologist who does research with viruses to answer questions in immunology and pathogenesis. I have worked with virologists for the past 20 years so I think I know what they are like.

Some virologists are directly trained by getting a PhD in a microbiology department in a major university. Such a specialist would do their research on some aspect of viral infection that could range from biochemistry of the molecules that make up viruses, the functions of the genes of viruses or the unique ways viruses infect cells, spread or cause disease. Other virologists might 'differentiate' or 'evolve' from specialists in other fields like entomology (arboviruses), ecology (geographic virologists), epidemiology (viral disease hunters) or pathology (causes of disease).

The one thing in common is a general fascination for viruses, these tiny submicroscopic particles consisting of protein and nucleic acids that can't exist very well without having some kind of biological host upon which they depend for some of their life functions.

The very fact that viruses depend on the very hosts they make sick or kill for their own existence is one of the reasons why scientists get so fascinated with them. In fact, there probably is a field devoted to descovering why we and viruses share so many of the same proteins and genes. So many, in fact, that some people think viruses were essential for evolution of many species including man.

Anyone who works with viruses has to have learned techniques for separating viruses free of the host cells they inhabit, growing viruses on tissue culture cells, purifying them using by various physical chemical methods like ultracentrifugation, adhesion to particles coated with antibodies or molecules that bind the virus that interests you, or examining the gene pattern and molecular weights of viruses after dissolving the virus in some solvent and running it on a gel or electrophoretic separation system.

Some virologists use the information they learn working with viruses to invent vaccines that might be used to protect people from the disease. Other virologists are interested in the ways the virus causes disease in an intact animal. They study what molecules and mechanisms the virus uses to cause infection or spread to others. They use this information to develop new drugs or treatments for viral disease. Other people try to use the above information to develop better and quicker ways to diagnose infection with specific viruses so doctors will know what to treat, if there is a treatment. And, finally some people are concerned about the ecology of the virus, what vectors spread it, what is its reservoir in nature and how does it occasionally break out of its normal nature and cause epidemics in people. This last kind of interest is probably one of the last frontiers where adventure and science may be one in the same. Some of the scientists I have worked with were of the latter type and their antics are now legends in books like the Hot Zone, and movies like Outbreak.