mSphere of Influence: Virology in the noise—how cell-to-cell variability impacts viral infection outcomes

Nir Drayman works at the intersection of virology and single-cell biology, studying how cellular heterogeneity shapes the outcome of viral infections (and specifically that of HSV-1). In this mSphere of Influence article, he reflects on how two papers, “Remote activation of host cell DNA synthesis in uninfected cells signaled by infected cells in advance of virus transmission” (N. Schmidt, T. Hennig, R. A. Serwa, M. Marchetti, and P. O’Hare, J Virol 89:11107–11115, 2015, https://doi.org/10.1128/jvi.01950-15) and “Extreme heterogeneity of influenza virus infection in single cells” (A. B. Russell, C. Trapnell, and J. D. Bloom, Elife 7:e32303, 2018, https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.32303), impacted his research by trail blazing the analysis of viral infections in single cells, as well as by illuminating what is yet left to discover.