CHARACTERISATION OF NOVEL PICORNAVIRUS-LIKE VIRUSES IDENTIFIED FROM PATIENTS WITH ACUTE RESPIRATORY INFECTIONS.

普通感冒和严重的胸部感冒通常是由于病毒感染，大多发生在儿童身上。不幸的是，我们只能在15%的病例中确定引起这种疾病的病毒。我们打算通过详细检查我们最近在一名患有严重呼吸道疾病的儿童中发现的一种新病毒来解决这一研究不足的问题。我们实验室的测试表明，这种新病毒与小核糖核酸病毒（导致一些普通感冒）有关，但似乎存在于患有更严重疾病的儿童中。我们的研究计划使用分子生物学工具以及澳大利亚科学家和临床医生的高级团队的专业知识更全面地识别新的小核糖核酸病毒样病毒（PLV），他们最近在澳大利亚发现了几种病毒，表明澳大利亚病毒研究能够实现极具竞争力的结果，使我们的医院，特别是年轻患者受益。我们的研究将开发出非常敏感的测试，依赖于检测非常少量的病毒基因组。我们可以使用这些测试来确定整个病毒的样子，它可能在一年中发生，以及PLV是否在世界范围内发现。我们的研究还将在实验室中产生病毒蛋白，并使用这些蛋白对储存的血液样本进行新的检测。如果血液样本来自以前感染过PLV的患者，他们的血液将含有特异性抗体，我们将能够检测到。我们还打算确定某些PLV菌株是否比其他菌株更有可能或更少可能导致严重疾病。对这些病毒和其他病毒的进一步了解可以最大限度地减少疾病在医院内传播的机会，帮助科学家决定针对哪些病毒设计疫苗和药物，并帮助医生更好地识别曾经未被诊断的病毒。

The common cold and serious chest colds are usually due to viral infections, and mostly occur in children. Unfortunately we can only be certain of the virus causing this illness in as little as 15% of cases. We intend to address this lack of research by examining, in detail, a new virus we recently identified in a child with serious respiratory illness that required admission to hospital. Testing by our laboratory suggests that the new virus is related to picornaviruses (which cause some common colds) but seems to be present in children with far more serious illness. Our study plans to more completely identify the new picornavirus-like virus (PLV) using the tools of molecular biology and the expertise of a senior team of Australian scientists and clinicians who have recently made several virus discoveries in Australia, demonstrating that Australian virus research is capable of achieving highly competitive results that benefit our hospitals and especially their young patients. Our studies will develop extremely sensitive tests which rely on the detection of very small amounts of the viral genome. We can use these tests to determine what the whole virus looks like, when it might occur during the year and whether the PLV are found worldwide. Our studies will also produce viral proteins in the laboratory and use these to make new tests for stored blood samples. If a blood sample comes from a patient who has previously been infected by PLV, their blood will contain specific antibodies which we will then be able to detect. We also intend to determine whether some strains of PLV are more or less likely to cause serious illness than others. Improved understanding of these and other viruses minimises the chance of illness spreading within a hospital, helps scientists to decide against which viruses to design vaccines and drugs and aids medical doctors to better identify what once went undiagnosed.