Talk:Virus latency

Viruses High‑importance

	Viruses portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Viruses, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of viruses on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.VirusesWikipedia:WikiProject VirusesTemplate:WikiProject Virusesvirus
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

Medicine Mid‑importance

	Medicine portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Medicine, which recommends that medicine-related articles follow the Manual of Style for medicine-related articles and that biomedical information in any article use high-quality medical sources. Please visit the project page for details or ask questions at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine.MedicineWikipedia:WikiProject MedicineTemplate:WikiProject Medicinemedicine
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Virology-accurate definition of latency

Would like to update article to clarify the role of latency, and describe it clearly in terms of virology.

The virology terms latency, dormancy, and abortive infection are nuanced, and well reviewed in doi: 10.1016/j.chom.2010.06.014

I propose the definition of latency as having the following nuances

Requires virus entry into a cell (EG, the persistence of an infectious virus particle, just hanging outside of a cell) is not latency.
Requires maintenance of the genome
Requires that no new infectious progeny viruses are made during the period of latency
The genome can be re-activated to form infectious new particles in the future (rules out abortive infections, persistence of genomes without the ability to reactivate and create new progeny)

The following should not be captured by the definition of viral latency:

abortive infection (EG, dead-end hosts, where the virus can enter, express proteins, but not produce new viral progeny)
persistence of a low-level "smoldering" infection, such as observed by many slow viruses
clinical latency (production of new infectious virus without symptoms)
infection of a non-permissive cell (nuance needed, eg HPV lifecycle)

Welcome any feedback and discussion on the topic. Cheers, ~Testtubewaltz Testtubewaltz (talk) 15:12, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The citation is old. Is there a more recent review? Graham Beards (talk) 15:19, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Adding to this: I'm sure a good virology textbook would have these terms defined using more up to date information. IntentionallyDense ^(Contribs) 04:43, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]