Principles of homeostasis in governing virus activation and latency

The goal of our work is to understand, from the molecular to the organismal level, the principles that drive and sustain lifelong infection by viruses . These infectious agents live in a dynamic equilibrium (homeostasis) with their hosts in which both immune and nonimmune pathways contribute to viral homeostasis. Disruption of these pathways can have dramatic consequences o n pathogenesis. Immune responses to infection provide a vital countermeasur e by the host but are nonsterilizing. They effect an essential and primary control mechanism for viral growth. Essential nonimmune pathways for effect ing control of a viral life cycle relate to the obligate dependency of the virus on its host. For these reasons, we view infections as a highly dynami c interplay that takes place between the pathogen and host. This, in many c ases, leads to the establishment of an incurable lifelong infection that re mains benign but can become life threatening once key homeostatic pathways are disrupted. We discuss these issues in the context of our studies using cytomegalovirus as a clinically relevant pathogen.