Research Product

In conclusion, I would like to point out the difficulty of working with some of these noninsect invertebrates. It is very hard to work with some of the marine invertebrates, for which there are no cell lines; they are not even amenable to culturing of the whole organism. One therefore can anticipate running into problems, extreme problems, in testing or applying tests of the NPVs and GVs to these organisms. This is a pioneering field with regard to aquatic organisms, but I think it has great promise. I would emphasize my original point that we should start close to the source from a conceptual point of view in testing some of the NPVs and GVs and look critically at the effect on other arthropods, particularly crustacea. . . The major new evidence that emerges here is that many groups of invertebrates are capable of harboring viruses that formerly were studied only in more obvious insect hosts. Thus, we may need to broaden our views on virus-host concepts and seek more widely for host-virus interactions.