About Viruses

Viruses are infectious agents that manipulate their host cells to replicate and spread. They are found in almost every ecosystem, and infect all life forms, from bacteria and archaea to animals and plants.

Viral infections affect millions of people by causing life threatening diseases, by damaging crops or by harming cattle.

The aim of this Collection is to house research studying relevant aspects of viral infection, evolution, and treatment. We welcome any type of methodology used, including experimental biology, biochemistry, microbiology, structural biology, genomics, and nanotechnology, to name a few.

A list of potential topics includes:

• Mechanisms of viral infection: virus attachment, entry into the host cell, genome delivery and viral egress.
• Virus life cycle: lysis, latency, and reactivation.
• Virus-host interactions: immune response, host defense systems.
• Treatment: identification of novel therapeutic targets, vaccines, nanotechnology applications.
• Evolutionary Virology: genomic sequencing, viral evolution, reservoir dynamics, emergence, and adaptation to new hosts.
• Viral Ecology: virus social interactions, viral role in ecosystems, viral impact on climate.

All article processing charges will be covered centrally by the European Commission.

Open Research Europe requires open access to research data supporting articles under the principle ‘as open as possible, as closed as necessary’. All articles should include citations to repositories that host the data underlying the results, together with any information needed to replicate, validate, and/or reuse the results/your study and analysis of the data. We recognise there may be exceptions due to ethical, data protection, or confidentiality considerations, or because the data have been obtained from a third party and access restrictions apply.