A team led by Chris Sullivan, a professor of molecular biosciences at The University of Texas at Austin, has provided the first positive evidence that RNA interference (RNAi), a biological process in which small RNA molecules prevent genes from being expressed, does not play a role as an antiviral in most body, or “somatic,” cells in mammals.

https://cns.utexas.edu/news/entry/rnai-not-antiviral

Fighting Viruses with RNAi

Plants, fungi, and invertebrates use RNA interference (RNAi) to fend off invading viruses. Mammals, on the other hand, are known to contain RNAi machinery, but researchers have never been able to prove that they use the molecular obstruction strategy for fighting viruses.

Retrovirus infected cells contain viral microRNAs
The encoding of microRNAs in retroviral genomes has remained a controversial hypothesis despite significant supporting evidence in recent years. A recent publication demonstrating the production of functional miRNAs from the retrovirus bovine leukemia virus adds further credence to the fact that retroviruses do indeed encode their own miRNAs.

https://retrovirology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1742-4690-10-15

Fighting the Viral Wars

How are our body’s hidden viruses like little green army men? Well, they aren’t really. They’re much smaller. But we can use them to learn something about how certain viruses evade our immune system. Meet Dr. Chris Sullivan, virologist at the University of Texas at Austin.