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EBOLA is notorious for its ability to spread like wildfire. Now virologists
in France and Germany think they know its secret.

The feared pathogen limits production of a key protein called GP so its
victims will live long enough to pass on the infection.

Other viruses use a similar strategy鈥擧IV is a prime example. But Viktor
Volchkov of the University of Marburg and his colleagues are the first to show
Ebola is less deadly to the cells it infects because it is churning out less GP,
which forms the virus鈥檚 surface spikes. Instead, Ebola produces large amounts of
a shorter or 鈥渦nedited鈥� version of the protein.

To find out why Ebola goes to all this trouble, the team engineered the
editing site so that it always produced GP. The resulting virus produced 5 times
as much GP and was far more toxic to cultured cells, killing them after 5 to 6
days, compared with over 8 days for the original virus. But the engineered virus
did not spread as far or produce as many new viruses.

The team now intends to tinker with other Ebola genes and find out what they
do, says Volchkov. They could then design weakened viruses to use as vaccines,
and even apply their findings to related viruses such as the Marburg virus.

鈥淚 think it鈥檚 an exciting paper and an exciting step forward in Ebola
research,鈥� says Gary Nabel, director of vaccine research at the National
Institutes of Health. He says the new technique opens up news ways of working
more safely with Ebola.