Welcome to Roland Zell's homepage
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Office address:Professor Roland ZellSection of Experimental Virology (Section's homepage) Institute for Medical Microbiology Jena University Hospital Friedrich Schiller University Jena Hans-Knöll-Str. 2 D-07745 Jena Germany Email: roland.zell@uni-jena.de |
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8317-2152Degrees:
1985 Diplom-Biologe (Diploma in Biology), Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Science, Albertus Magnus University Cologne, Germany1988 Dr. rer. nat. (PhD in Biology), Faculty of Biology, Ludwig Maximilians University Munich, Germany
2003 Dr. habil. (venia legendi in Virology), Faculty of Medicine, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany
2010 Apl. Professor für Virologie (Associate Professor in Virology), Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany
Curriculum vitae:
1979-1985 Studies in Biology, Albertus Magnus University Cologne1985-1988 PhD studies in molecular biology, University of Munich and Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry, Dept. Cell Biology
1988-1992 Postdoctoral fellowship, Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry, Dept. Virus Research
1993-1995 Research assistant, Eberhard Karls University Tübingen, Department of Pathology
1996-today Research associate and lecturer, Assoc. Professor of Virology, University of Jena, Section of Experimental Virology
Research interests:
- Molecular biology of coxsackieviruses
- Taxonomy and evolution of picornaviruses
- Molecular biology and evolution of influenza viruses
- Evolution of herpesviruses
- Einvironmental virology
Teaching responsibilities:
- Module BBC3.A7 "Virology" (lecture and practical course)
- Module MBC.A15 "Virus-host cell interactions" (lecture and practical course)
Services:
- 2009-today Picornaviridae Study Group of ICTV
- 2014-2020 Chair of Picornaviridae Study Group of ICTV
- 2020-today Chair of Picornavirales Study Group of ICTV
- 2013-2019 Editorial Board of Journal of General Virology
- 2020-today Editorial Board of Microorganisms (MDPI)
- 2020-today Editorial Board of Pathogens (MDPI)
Sense of humour
Odd correspondence with editors:
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Published in British Medical Journal 2(5918):559, 1974:
Referees and Rejects
"SIR,—Dr. Samuel Johnson was only once worsted in debate, and even then by a woman. "Money," he declaimed, "there is no happiness that money lets in." "Very true," replied Mrs. Thrale, "but how much unhappiness does it keep out?" Mutatis mutandis, Mrs. Thrale—a very sensible person—would have said the same about medical referees.
I am greatly surprised to learn that nowadays authors argue with referees. My most earth-shaking papers were always returned, but no editor ever gave his reasons. In fact the last one you sent back to me did not even report your personal regret. In my declining years as a referee it never for an instant struck me that I should explain myself. In both cases Martial's all-sufficient reason was self-evident—"I do not love thee, Dr. Fell...." Remember the Lord Chief Justice's advice to the young judge; "Give your verdict; it will probably be corrrect. Never give your reasons; they will usually be wrong."
Is it possible that we have been watching too much professional soccer, where referee baiting is half the fun? For your own sake, dear Editor, watch your step. All too soon we may see you carrying your leader writers shoulder high in a lap of honour round Tavistock Square and successful authors will be kissed on at least two cheeks.
Virgin authors should not be put off. There is no paper so brilliant that it will never be accepted by anyone; and none so poor that some good Samaritan will not give it room. Indeed some journals never publish anything else. And remember they all sell reprints, and the least-regarded journals of uncontrolled experiments and plagiarized clinical reports have usually the glossiest covers.—I am, etc.,
R. J. V. PULVERTAFT
Stour Row,
near Shaftesbury,
Dorset" - Acronymania and Acronymophilia
Published in the New England Journal of Medicine 320(17):1153 (1989):
Abbreviations in the medical literature
"There is a recent trend (RT) in the medical literature (ML) to abbreviate previously unabbreviated phrases for the sake of efficiency (PUPSAE). Although it makes good sense (GS), the frequency with which it is used can tax the inexperienced reader (IR). Sometimes repetition can actually be beneficial (RCABB) by allowing the reader to retain words that he does not constantly have to refer back to (WOHCREBT). I would like to suggest to the Editor (ED) that for the IR who doesn’t wish to have PUPSAE, he have the GS to change the ML so that RCABB and he can eliminate WOHCREBT."
S.G. Mann
Peter Medawar's advice to a young scientist:
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Hard Luck on Spouses?
One of the scenes I remember most vividly from my period (1951-62) as professor (chairman) of zoology in University College London, the oldest and largest university in the federation that makes up "London University," was the gathering of teaching and research staff for coffee on Christmas morning.
What on earth were they doing there on Christmas Day? One or two were clearly lonely and had come to enjoy the special comradeship of travelers on the same road (the one that winds uphill all the way). Others came in to keep an eye on experiments in progress and incidentally to give the mice their Christmas dinner—the uproar created by a thousand mice eating corn flakes falls gratefully on the ears of those who are fond of mice and wish them well. But most of the men in the little gathering had it in common that they were fathers of young families. Back at the ranch, therefore, their wives were performing the daily miracle of young motherhood—entertaining, appeasing, suppressing the natural instincts of, and bringing out the best in, a family of children who seemed twice as numerous as they really were.
Men or women who go to the extreme length of marrying scientists should be clearly aware beforehand, instead of learning the hard way later, that their spouses are in the grip of a powerful obsession that is likely to take the first place in their lives outside the home, and probably inside too; there may not then be many romps on the floor with the children and the wife of a scientist may find herself disproportionately the man as well as the woman about the house when it comes to mending fuses, getting the car serviced, or organizing the family holiday. Conversely, the husband of a scientist must not expect to find gigot de poulette cuit a la vapeur de Marjolaine ready on the table when he gets home from work probably less taxing than his wife's."
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Writing a paper
"A scientist who completes writing—or, as people unaccountably say, "writing up" a paper (by which, of course, they mean "writing down")—should feel proud of it, should feel, indeed, "this will make people sit up." It shows either a poor spirit or perhaps good judgment if no such thought enters the author's head.
When I was director of the National Institute for Medical Research, a young colleague of mine completed a brief letter to Nature—the traditional vehicle of important scientific news—that was so important, he felt, and so eagerly awaited by the world that it should not be entrusted to the post but must be delivered by hand. So it was. But then, unfortunately, it was lost and had to be resubmitted. This time, it went by post. We all felt that on the previous occasion it had been pushed under the door and therefore probably ended up under the welcome mat. Moral: use the recognized channels of communication."
Peter B. Medawar, Advice to a young scientist. Harper Colophon Books, Harper & Row, New York (1979).
'homolog' or 'homologue'?
"Over the last few months, I have learned to look forward to Gregory Petsko's comments in Genome Biology. Beyond enjoying the witticisms, I tend mostly to agree with his message. When I started reading the recent article 'Homologuephobia' (Genome Biology 2001, 2:comment1002), it was no different. Like Petsko, I hate that "ue" at the end of "homologue", and for that matter, all the other obnoxious "e"s'. I never consider having a drink in any establishment hat has 'Olde' in its name, or buying as much as a hair comb in a 'Shoppe'. And coming back to the 'homologous' problem, I think I have made a small contribution to leaner, meaner spelling by getting away with 'homolog' in many publications, albeit accepting the forced 'homologue' in many others (even as I type this, the impervious little red wave from my spell-checker is, of course, right here, under 'homolog'). So I was very much with Petsko on this momentous issue..."Eugene Koonin, An apology for orthologs - or brave new memes, Genome Biology 2(4):comment1005.1-1005.2 (2001).
What’s homology? (1)
"Homology has the precise meaning in biology of having a common evolutionary origin, but it also carries the loose meaning of possessing similarity or being matched. Its rampant use in the loose sense is clogging the literature on protein and nucleic acid sequence comparisons with muddy writing and, in some cases, muddy thinking.In its precise biological meaning, homology is a concept of quality. The word asserts a type of relationship between two or more things. Thus, amino acid or nucleotide sequences are either homologous or they are not. They cannot exhibit a particular level of homology or percent homology. Instead, two sequences possess a certain level of similarity. Similarity is thus a quantitative property. Homologous proteins or nucleic acid segments can range from highly similar to not recognizably similar (where similarity has disappeared through divergent evolution).
If using homology loosely did not interfere with our thinking about evolutionary relationships, the way in which we use the term would be a rather unimportant semantic issue. The fact is, however, that loose usage in sequence comparison papers often makes it difficult to know the author's intent and can lead to confusion for the reader (and even for the author). ..."
Gerald R. Reeck, Christoph de Haen, David C. Teller, Russell F. Doolittle, Walter M. Fitch, Richard E. Dickerson, Pierre Chambon, Andrew D. McLachlan, Emanuel Margoliash, Thomas H. Jukes and Emile Zuckerkandl, "Homology" in Proteins and Nucleic Acids: A Terminology Muddle and a Way out of it, Cell 50:667 (1987)
What’s homology? (2)
"One should not define homology objectively because: (a) it requires defining homology by an arbitrary amount of identity; (b) it excludes the possibility of analogy; and (c) this still does not solve the problem of our confidence that the characters asserted to be homologous do have a common ancestor. Homology is here an abstraction in that it is a relationship, common ancestry, the nature which we find important to know about, but which we can only infer with more or less certainty.It is worth repeating here that homology, like pregnancy, is indivisible. You either are homologous (pregnant) or you are not. Thus, if what one means to assert is that 80% of the character states are identical one should speak of 80% identity, and not 80% homology.
Walter M. Fitch, Homology - a personal view on some of the problems, Trends in Genetics 16(5):227-231 (2000)
Glow of schadenfreude, lack of compassion or subtle sense of justice?
"One of the more satisfying experiences of my life was seeing a candidate for Fellowship of the Royal Society rejected on the grounds that they had published so many papers that they’d barely have been able to read all the things that came out with their name on it."Comment by David Colquhoun on a post by Benjamin (Buzz) Baum, 22 Feb 2017, On Biology blog (http://blogs.biomedcentral.com/on-biology/2017/02/22/science-journey-search-destination/?utm_campaign=BMC40646B&utm_medium=BMCemail&utm_source=Teradata)
The Nine Circles of Scientific Hell
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"In the spirit of Dante Alighieri's Inferno, this paper takes a humorous look at the fate that awaits scientist who sin against best practice. ... Dante’s Hell had a place for everyone, and it was only Christ’s intervention that saved anyone from it; even "good" people went to Hell, because everyone sinned, and sins were still sins however ubiquitous they were. Likewise, very few scientists (the author is certainly not one of them) would be able to avoid being condemned to some level of this Inferno... but is that an excuse? First Circle: Limbo Second Circle: Overselling Third Circle: Post-Hoc Storytelling Fourth Circle: p Value Fishing Fifth Circle: Creative Use of Outliers Sixth Circle: Plagiarism Seventh Circle: Nonpublication of Data Eight Circle: Partial Publication of Data Ninth Circle: Inventing Data |
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What’s magic about the Number 3?
"There’s something magical and magisterial about the number three. Religion has its Holy Trinity; literature has its Three Musketeers; comedy has its Three Stooges; folk music has its Peter, Paul, and Mary; thoroughbred racing has its Triple Crown; and the universe has its first three minutes. In baseball, it’s ‘‘three strikes and you’re out’’; in science, it’s the Nobel Rule of Three; and in art, it’s the three-panel triptych."Joseph L. Goldstein, Cell 167:5-8 (2016).
The classification of viruses (1)
"We shall try to apply the rules of grammar. The word "virus" being a noun will be used as such and not as an adjective. When an adjective is needed, we shall make use of the adjective "viral." Some readers will accuse us of affectation. We hope to be forgiven for, our mother language being French, we do not feel entitled to violate English grammar. ...If one likes the perpetuation of confusion and disorder one can, of course, well decide that the bacterium which causes psittacosis is a virus and that the poxvirus is a bacterium. Why not? If the categories are not defined and if the terms are devoid of meaning, any sequence of words can be produced. Why, after all, separate viruses from bacteria? Since the time of Aristotle, it has been conceded that categories exist by virtue of a definition. Of course, to select the valid discriminatory character of a category is a tiring intellectual effort. Yet, from time to time we have to justify our appurtenance to the species Homo sapiens".
André Lwoff and Paul Tournier, The classification of viruses, Annu. Rev. Microbiol. 20:45-74 (1966).
The classification of viruses (2):
THE DEFUNCT SUBCOMMITTEE AND THE INTERNATIONAL STATUS OF THE NOMENCLATURE OF VIRUSES"A few years ago, the judicial committee of the International Committee on Bacterial Nomenclature appointed a subcommittee on nomenclature of the viruses (SCNV). As this subcommittee no longer exists it will, for the sake of simplicity, be called the defunct subcommittee.
The International Code of Nomenclature of Bacteria and Viruses was, of course, supposed to be applied to viruses and, in theory, virologists should have conformed to its rules.
Let us recall that each family must have a type genus and that the name of the family is the name of the type genus followed by the suffix, aceae, for plants and bacteria, and ideae for animals. The name of the type genus and of the family are thus coordinated. This is a very wise rule indeed. A few examples of the "decisions" of the subcommittee will be analyzed.
Picorna.—The term, picorna, was proposed by the defunct subcommittee as the name of a "group". Pico is a prefix in the metric system meant to indicate a submultiple of a unit, namely 10-12, and rna stands for RNA. Thus, picorna means 10-12 ribonucleic acid.
Moreover, it is stated in the minutes of the subcommittee that the initial letters of picorna may be taken to refer to poliomyelitis, insensitivity to ether, Coxsackie, orphan, and rhinovirus. A disease, a chemical property, a virus, a state, and again a virus. This is ridiculous.
Papova.—The term, papova, was proposed by Melnick in 1962 and endorsed by the defunct subcommittee in order to embrace the papilloma virus, the polyoma virus, and the vacuolating agent, hence pa-po-va. Let us suppose that later it is found that one of the three viruses must be excluded from the group. As a consequence, the name papova would become a nonsense name and would have to be changed. It is to avoid such a contingency that the rule was established, stating that a family must be named from its type genus. Papova, which does not correspond to a genus, cannot be the name of a family. Delenda papova!
Varia.—
ECHO stands for Enteric, Cytopathogenic, Human, Orphan.
ECBO stands for Enteric, Cytopathogenic, Bovine, Orphan.
N ITA stands for Nuclear Inclusion Type A (!).
REO stands for Respiratory, Enteric, Orphan.
No comment."
André Lwoff and Paul Tournier, The classification of viruses, Annu. Rev. Microbiol. 20:45-74 (1966).
Icosahedral structure of poliovirus: An anecdote.
Solving the structure of the plant viruses, however, did mean that the structure of other viruses, animal viruses, might also be determined. Picornaviruses seemed the obvious next goal. One reason was that polio virus had been crystallized by Schaffer and Schwerdt in 1955 (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 41:1020-1023). Steve Harrison tells the following story (is it apocryphal?):Virtue of modesty
"Some time ago, R. W. Mandl paid me a visit and asked me to publish the results of a little calculation, which I had made on his request. This note complies with his wish. ..."Albert Einstein: Lens-like action of a star by the deviation of light in the gravitational field.
Science 84(Nr. 2188, 4th Dec. 1936):506-507
Things to know
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"A fool with a tool is still a fool."
Grady Booch -
"The way you get research done is to find the guy that wants to do it and then give him the chance to work."
Thomas Milton Rivers -
"Problems do not exist in nature. Nature only knows solutions."
André Lwoff. Lysogeny. Bact. Rev. 17:269-337 (1953) -
"A scientist should never attempt to judge the value of his own achievements, whether significant or not, but especially
when not. This is the Golden Rule of intellectual hygiene."
André Lwoff. The Prophage and I. In: Phage and the Origins of Molecular Biology. J. Cairns, G.S. Stent, J.D. Watson (eds.), CSH Laboratory of Quant. Biol. (1966), pp. 88-99.
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"If you steal from one author, it's plagiarism; if you steal from many, it's research."
Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)
A reference for the Latin word "virus"
 Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.) Sculpture by Bertel Thorvaldsen, Thorvaldsen Museum, Kopenhagen (photo: Gunnar Bach Pedersen, wikipedia.de) |
Laelius de amicitia Quin etiam si quis asperitate ea est et immanitate naturae, congressus ut hominum fugiat atque oderit, qualem fuisse Athenis Timonem nescio quem accepimus, tamen is pati non possit, ut non anquirat aliquem, apud quem evomat virus acerbitatis suae. |
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Laelius on Friendship Nay, even if anyone were of a nature so savage and fierce as to shun and loathe the society of men—such, for example, as tradition tells us a certain Timon of Athens once was—yet even such a man could not refrain from seeking some person before whom he might pour out the venom of his embittered soul. (translation by William Armistead Falconer, published in the Loeb Classical Library, 1923) |
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Laelius über die Freundschaft Wäre auch jemand von so rauher und unempfindlicher Gemütsart, dass er allen Umgang mit Menschen flieht und hasst, wie uns ein Beispiel aus Athen in der Person eines gewissen Timon überliefert wird, so könnte ein solcher Mensch es doch nicht über sich bringen, sich nicht nach jemandem umzusehen, bei dem er das Gift seiner bitteren Laune ausschütten könnte. (Deutsche Übersetzung von W. M. Pahl) |
Another insight of Cicero
"Causarum enim cognitio cognitionem eventorum facit."[For the knowledge of causes produces a knowledge of effects. Translation by C.D. Yonge]
[Jedenfalls bewirkt die Kenntnis der Ursachen die Erkenntnis der Ergebnisse. Übersetzung R. Zell]
Marcus Tullius Cicero: Topica 67 [On Topics 67]
Biochemistry - Molecular biology
"One of the most pleasant transitions (even revolutions) in the biomedical world has been the blurring of party lines, first in research, and more gradually in teaching. I hope I am not being a chauvinist by pointing out that this transition was due to a gradual realization that biochemistry in fact pervades every biomedical discipline. How can a cytologist do research or teach without considering the biochemical nature of the cells, or a physiologist investigate secretion or nerve transmission without taking account of the biochemical elements involved? And so on.When the term "molecular biology" was first introduced, I thought it was somewhat silly, since biochemists had been studying the molecules of biological systems since the late 1800s. I now realize it was a face-saving device for physiologists and biophysicists who had discovered biochemistry and wanted to apply it without seeming to cave in.
In any event, party lines have largely come down, much to the advantage of biomedical research and teaching."
Oliver H. Lowry, How to succeed in research without being a genius, Annu. Rev. Biochem. 59:1-27 (1990).
What's a virus?
- "Viruses are usually characterized by three negative properties, namely, invisibility by ordinary microscopic methods, failure to be
retained by filters impervious to well-known bacteria, and inability to propagate themselves in the absence of susceptible cells. ... The
confused state of our knowledge of the viruses at the present time makes it exceedingly difficult to define the nature of these active agents.
The easiest way out of the dilemma, however, would be the acceptance of the presumptive evidence that viruses are minute organisms. Yet the
easiest way and the one that best fits the experiences of the day may not be the right one. ... Unless viruses represent a form of life
unknown to us, proof of their living nature would not be a striking discovery. If, however, some of them are not animate, absolute proof
of such a fact would be of fundamental biological importance. ... In any event, we are face to face with the “infinitely small in biology,”
and, if there be a sharp demarcation between life and death, then scientists, investigating the nature of viruses, are working near the
line that separates infinitely small living organisms from inanimate active agents."
Thomas M. Rivers. The Nature of viruses. Physiological Reviews 12:423-452 (1932). - "Certain large protein molecules (viruses) possess the property of multiplying within living organisms. This process, which is at
once so foreign to chemistry and so fundamental to biology, is exemplified in the multiplication of bacteriophage in the presence of
susceptible bacteria."
Emory L. Ellis & Max Delbrück. The growth of bacteriophage. J. Gen. Physiol. 20(3):365-384 (1939). - "No one worried very much about what it meant to be 'alive' before the viruses came along. Animals and plants were alive, minerals
were not, and the difference between the two was obvious. But when the virus was found to occupy some rather vague no-man's-land between
the domain of animals and that of minerals, the old question, 'what is life?' gained significance. And at second glance, it proved to be
a profoundly difficult question to answer. The qualities which distinguish the living from the non-living were not so obvious after all."
Wendell M. Stanley & Evans G. Valens. Viruses and the nature of life (1961). - "If a virus be neither organism nor melecule, what is its nature? What is a virus? It is a malady of our time that words are often
deprived of their meaning. Many people like to think that a virus is something different from a virus.
My ambition is to show that the word virus has a meaning, and I shall defend a paradoxical viewpoint, namely that viruses are viruses"
André Lwoff. The concept of Virus. The Third Marjory Stephenson Memorial Lecture. J. Gen. Virol. 17:239-253 (1957). - "For the chemist, poliovirus is a highly ordered aggregate of five species of macromolecules with an empirical formula of its organic
matter of C332,652 H492,388 N98,245 O 131,196 P7501 S2340."
Akhteruzzaman Molla, Aniko V. Paul, Eckard Wimmer. Cell-free, de novo synthesis of poliovirus. Science 254:1647-1651 (1991). - "In 1828, when Wöhler synthesized urea, the theory of vitalism was shattered. If the ability to replicate is an attribute of life,
then poliovirus is a chemical [C332,652 H492,388 N98,245 O 131,196 P7501 S2340]
with a life cycle."
Jeronimo Cello, Aniko V. Paul, Eckard Wimmer. Chemical synthesis of poliovirus cDNA: Generation of infectious virus in the absence of natural template. Science 297:1016-1018 (2002). - "No virus is known to do good; it has been well said that a virus is 'a piece of bad news wrapped up in protein'."
Peter B. Medawar & Jean S. Medawar. 1983. Viruses, p. 275. In P. B. Medawar & J. S. Medawar (eds.), Aristotle to zoos: a philosophical dictionary of biology. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. - "A virus is not an individual organism in the ordinary sense of the term, but something which could almost be called a
stream of biological patterns."
MacFarlane Burnet, 1957.
How many viruses are there?
"As is well known, in the case of ordinary bacteria for every pathogenic microorganism discovered many non-pathogenic varieties of the same type have been found in nature, and it seems highly probable that the same rule will be found to hold good in the case of ultra-microscopic viruses. It is difficult, however, to obtain proof of their existence, as pathogenicity is the only evidence we have at the present time of the presence of an ultra-microscopic virus."Frederic W. Twort. An investigation on the nature of ultra-microscopic viruses. Lancet, Dec. 4, 1915.
About the first communication on bacteriophages:
"Examination of the scientific literature discloses but two communications bearing on the subject of the bacteriophage. In point of priority the first is that of Hankin [L'action bactéricide des eaux de la Jumna et du Gange sur le vibrion du choléra. Ann. de l'Inst. Pasteur 10:511, 1896]. This author states that he detected in the waters of certain rivers of India a very marked antiseptic action, directed against bacteria in general, but against the cholera vibrio more particularly. Thus, for instance, the water of the Jumna as it leaves the town of Agra contains more than 100,000 bacteria per cubic centimeter, while at a distance of 5 kilometers further down the bacterial content is but 90 to 100."Felix D'Herelle. The bacteriophage. Its role in immunity. Authorized translation by George H Smith. Williams & Wilkins Co., Baltimore, USA (1922).
Felix d'Herelle and lysogeny:
"Already in 1915, Twort had thought that the bacteriophagy might be due to a virus. This was also the opinion of d'Hérelle: bacteriophages are viruses which kill the bacteria. Lysogeny came to confuse the bacteriologists. D'Hérelle at first denied the lysogeny. Later, he became convinced that he had discovered it. None of this is important, but the bacteria producing bacteriophages posed a curious problem."André Lwoff. Nobel Lecture: Interaction among Virus, Cell, and Organism. December 11, 1963.