Little Rock, Ark.
Courtney
Wilkins, a microbiology and immunology graduate student at the
University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, is photographed during an
interview, Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2005, near a computer image of some of
her work with small worms infected with a virus at the UAMS campus in
Little Rock, Ark. Wilkins is the first person to successfully infect
the Caenorhabditis elegans, or C. elegans, worm with the mammalian
vesicular stomatitis virus and have it replicate. (AP Photo/Danny
Johnston)Finally, a virus infects a worm and it has nothing to do with computers. But it does have a lot to do with humans.
Courtney
Wilkins, a microbiology and immunology student at the University of
Arkansas for Medical Sciences, successfully infected the Caenorhabditis
elegans earthworm with the mammalian vesicular stomatitis virus and had
it replicate.
Others had tried and failed before, and Wilkins'
breakthrough will let researchers learn more about how viruses move
from one host to another, and what proteins they attach to in humans.
Some cells in the C. elegans, a microscopic earthworm commonly used in
biomedical research, are similar to some human cells.
"There were a lot of labs interested in whether this could work, so it just seemed pretty exciting," she said Wednesday.
The research will also be featured in this month's edition of Nature magazine.
Since
January 2002, Wilkins began studying whether she could infect the worms
with a virus and have the virus spread. She usually worked with muscle
or intestinal cells and eventually settled on using the vesicular
stomatitis virus. The virus is related to rabies and similar to
foot-and-mouth disease and mostly infects livestock, Wilkins said.
It took three to four months to establish the cell cultures.
Khaled
Machaca, one of Wilkins' advisers and a professor of cell biology, said
the experiment wasn't without its rough spots. He said that there were
points when he had to remind Wilkins' that her decision to undertake
the research was a risky one, because it was unknown whether it would
work.
And that meant Wilkins' degree was at stake, because her
career could be stopped if nothing came of the research, he said. After
two years, it was clear that Wilkins was successful in her experiment.
Wilkins
remembered discovering about 9 p.m. one night in 2004 that the VSV had
replicated inside the worm cell. She immediately called Marie Chow, a
professor of virology and another adviser.
"Courtney gets so
excited that she starts to stutter," Chow said. "She couldn't get the
words out, so we knew there was something to it," she said.
Having successfully infected a C. elegans and had the VSV replicate in the worm's cells has many implications, Chow said.
She
said that, with the research, there is now the opportunity to
understand how viruses move from one host to another, and what proteins
they attach to in humans, she said. Chow said it will also help
scientists understand how this virus deals with different kinds of
immune systems in insects and mammals.
Since her discovery,
Wilkins' has taken her research to the American Society of Virology
conference at Penn State University in State College, Pa., and also to
the International Worm Meeting at UCLA.
The research will also be featured in this month's edition of Nature magazine.