Poliovirus [SEP] discoverer or inventor
, poliovirus is widely regarded as the simplest significant virus.
Poliovirus was first isolated in 1909 by Karl Landsteiner and Erwin Popper. In 1981, the poliovirus genome was published by two different teams of researchers: by Vincent Racaniello and David Baltimore at MIT and by Naomi Kitamura and Eckard Wimmer at Stony Brook University. Poliovirus is one of the most well-characterized viruses, and has become a useful model system for understanding the biology of RNA viruses.
Replication cycle.
Poliovirus infects human cells by binding to an immunoglobulin
-independent manner, which violates a long-standing dogma in protein synthesis of eukaryotic cells. IRESes have now found widespread recognition in cell biology and application in biotechnology. An IRES chimeric oncolytic poliovirus [PV(RIPO)], originally constructed in Wimmer’s laboratory, has now been developed by Matthias Gromeier at Duke University for the treatment of human glioma.
Wimmer is co-discoverer of the poliovirus receptor CD155, a cell-adhesion molecule and tumor antigen, whose expression is regulated by the sonic hedgehog pathway. A decade-