On the border between the animate and inanimate worlds, viruses occupy a special place: biochemical machines specialized in creating copies of themselves. By themselves, viruses are incapable of reproducing, which makes them different from organisms – they must first infect the host cell, forcing their way through numerous defense entanglements, and then take control of its cellular protein factories.
It is from the forcibly seized assembly lines that the next viral particles descend. But in nature, viruses are more than a civilization of death. There are so many of them in our environment – water, soil and air – that biologists are already talking about the “vortex.” Most of them infect bacteria, with which they affect the metabolism cycle. They can also transport genetic material between organisms, affecting their evolutionary trajectories. Even our brains may owe something to ancient viral infections.
We will be introduced to the extraordinary world of viruses and their interactions with organisms during the Copernicus Festival by Prof. Krzysztof Pyrć of the Jagiellonian University’s Malopolska Center for Biotechnology, who specializes in human coronaviruses, is a researcher of the molecular mechanisms by which viral infections occur, and a co-discoverer of several viruses previously unknown to science. The team of prof. Pyrcia is also working on translating biological discoveries into potential antiviral therapies.