Author: Aimee Cunningham / Source: Science News for Students
Stomach bugs sweep through schools and workplaces every year around the world.
Norovirus is often the culprit. In the United States, this infection tends to strike from November to April. Family members can fall ill one after another. Whole schools can shut down because so many kids and teachers are out sick. It’s a very contagious disease that causes vomiting and diarrhea. Now, scientists have learned just how this nasty virus takes over the gut. New data in mice show that it homes in on one rare type of cell.Norovirus is actually a family of viruses. One of its members emerged at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. There, it sickened 275 people, including some of the athletes. Globally, noroviruses cause about 1 in 5 cases of gut-wrenching stomach illness. In countries where healthcare is good and easy to get, it’s mostly inconvenient. The viruses keep their victims home from work and school. But in countries where healthcare is more costly or hard to get, norovirus infections can prove lethal. Indeed, each year more than 200,000 people die from them.
Scientists had not known much about how these viruses do their dirty work. They didn’t even know what cells the viruses targeted. Until now.
Craig Wilen is a physician scientist at the Washington University School of Medicine in St.
Louis, Mo. Previously, his team had shown in mouse studies that to enter cells, noroviruses need a specific protein — molecules that are important parts of all living things. They used that protein to home in on the viruses’ target.That key protein showed up on only one rare type of cell. It lives in the lining of the intestine. These cells stick tiny finger-like projections into the gut wall. This cluster of tiny tubes sticking off the ends of the…
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