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Viruses are obligate intracellular pathogens that hijack a myriad of host cell processes to facilitate replication and suppress host antiviral defenses. In its essence, a virus is a segment of foreign nucleic acid that engages host cell machinery to drive viral genome replication, gene transcription, and protein synthesis to generate progeny virions. Because of this, host organisms have developed sophisticated detection systems that activate antiviral defenses following recognition of aberrant nucleic acids. For example, recognition of viral nucleic acids by host DNA repair proteins results in compromised viral genome integrity, induction of antiviral inflammatory programs, cell cycle arrest, and apoptosis. Unsurprisingly, diverse viral families have evolved multiple strategies that fine-tune host DNA repair responses to suppress activation of antiviral defenses while simultaneously hijacking DNA repair proteins to facilitate virus replication. This review summarizes common molecular strategies viruses deploy to exploit host DNA repair mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) outbreak took the world by storm due to its rapid global spread and unpredictable disease outcomes. The extraordinary ascension of SARS-CoV-2 to pandemic status motivated a world-wide effort to rapidly develop vaccines that could effectively suppress virus spread and mitigate severe disease. These efforts culminated in the development and deployment of several highly effective vaccines that were heralded as the beginning-of-the-end of the pandemic. However, these successes were short lived due to the unexpected and continuous emergence of more transmissible and immune-evasive SARS-CoV-2 variants. Thus, attention has shifted toward developing novel vaccine platforms that elicit more robust and sustained neutralizing antibody responses. Recent findings by Muñoz-Alía and colleagues address this by combining a live recombinant measles vaccine platform with novel biochemical approaches to generate vaccine candidates that bolster the potency of neutralizing antibody responses against diverse SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins (M. Á. Muñoz-Alía, R. A. Nace, B. Balakrishnan, L. Zhang, et al., mBio 9:e02928-23, 2024, https://doi.org/10.1128/mbio.02928-23)., Competing Interests: The author declares no conflict of interest.