The understanding of dengue virus pathogenesis has been hampered by the lack of in vitro and in vivo models of disease. The study of viral factors involved in the production of severe dengue, dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF), versus the more common dengue fever (DF), have been limited to indirect clinical and epidemiologic associations. In an effort to identify viral determinants of DHF, we have ...

Like all other positive-strand RNA viruses, hepatitis C virus (HCV) induces rearrangements of intracellular membranes that are thought to serve as a scaffold for the assembly of the viral replicase machinery. The most prominent membranous structures present in HCV-infected cells are double-membrane vesicles (DMVs). However, their composition and role in the HCV replication cycle are poorly unde...

Dengue virus (DENV) causes over 500,000 infections annually with a spectrum of clinical diseases ranging from subclinical infection to dengue, a mild febrile illness, to life-threatening severe dengue. Vascular leakage without endothelial cell damage is the hallmark symptom of severe dengue illness and is proposed to be directly mediated by soluble inflammatory mediators IL-8 and TNFα. IL-8 pro...