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2008 Public Lecture Series

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SARS: The Threat That Succumbed to Science - for Now?

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) emerged in late 2002 as a deadly new form of pneumonia that had not been seen previously. It first appeared in the Guangdong province of China , and by early 2003 it had spread to some 30 countries worldwide, infecting over 8,000 people and killing nearly a tenth of them. In a remarkably short period of time, scientists had identified the causative agent of SARS as a member of the coronavirus family, and molecular tests were soon developed for surveillance and diagnostic purposes. Through the timely and effective application of public health measures, the SARS epidemic was successfully contained. Roughly eight months after the disease was first described, the human-to-human chain of transmission was broken, and SARS disappeared as dramatically as it had first appeared. In the years since, we have learned a great deal about coronaviruses in general and the SARS coronavirus in particular. However, questions still remain as to exactly how it crossed from an animal source to humans and how we can best combat the virus if such a jump across the species barrier occurs again.

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Paul Masters, Ph.D.

Dr. Masters has been a member of the Wadsworth Center since 1988, and he is currently the chief of the Laboratory of Viral Disease. His group studies the molecular biology of the model coronavirus mouse hepatitis virus (MHV) and, more recently, the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) coronavirus. His laboratory developed the first reverse genetics system for the analysis of members of this family of viruses. His current National Institutes of Health funding supports research into the fundamental mechanisms of coronavirus replication. In particular, he is interested in how the different viral structural proteins assemble into progeny virions in an infected cell and how the virus directs the selective synthesis of its own RNA genetic material. Dr. Masters received a doctorate in biochemistry from Brandeis University and did postdoctoral work in virology at the University of California-Santa Barbara and at the Roche Institute for Molecular Biology.