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Given that bacteria are universally present in the mammalian gastrointestinal tract, viruses that infect intestinal cells always do so in the presence of this microbiota. Two research teams have now determined that infection with certain viruses depends on the presence of these bacteria.
In studies with a murine retrovirus (mouse mammary tumor virus [MMTV]), Kane and colleagues found that this pathogen could not readily infect either antibiotic-treated or germ-free mice. To elucidate this observation, they conducted a series of experiments involving multiple mouse strains and cell lines. They found that MMTV infection was dependent on the development of an immune-evasion pathway, which was driven by production of the immunoregulatory cytokin…