Abstract

The world has seen several deadly viral pandemics in the past few decades. Understanding the biological mechanisms that viruses utilize could facilitate future therapies against viral diseases and exploit viruses for other applications. My PhD work focused on clinical and molecular aspects of two human-pathogenic parvoviruses, human bocavirus (HBoV) 1 and B19V. We evaluated the clinical performances of different diagnostic methods for acute HBoV1 infection. We also identified the persistence sites and host cells of parvoviruses in tissues, determined the mechanisms of viral entry in vitro and investigated the cellular impact of parvovirus tissue persistence. I will present our recent findings as well as a broad range of molecular biological techniques that we applied.