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The Good That Viruses Do.

It is astonishing that with our more than thirty-ﬁve combined years of working in the ﬁeld of virology, we continue to read on a regular basis about novel emerging viruses infecting species from all three domains of life. The focus of our research is on single-stranded DNA viruses. Even for this apparently small group of viruses, many new members are identiﬁed each year that need to be characterized, providing seemingly endless opportunities for new research directions. Indeed, studying these new viruses does not end with characterization of their physical properties or disease-causing phenotypes, because many have the potential to be developed into useful biologics with therapeutic beneﬁts to humans. Our experience as virologists suggests that the use of “good” viruses is common practice. If a survey were to ask nonvirologists for their opinions about viruses, the word “good” would be unlikely to arise. Instead, words such as “disease,” “infection,” “suf-fering,” or “life-threatening” would likely dominate, as people primarily think of viruses such as HIV, Ebola virus, Zika virus, inﬂuenza virus, or whatever new outbreak is in the news. However, as we are now ﬁnding out, not all viruses are detrimental to human health. In fact, some viruses have beneﬁcial properties for their hosts in a symbiotic relationship (1), while other natural and laboratory-modiﬁed viruses can be used to target and kill cancer cells, to treat a variety of genetic diseases as gene and cell therapy tools, or to serve as vaccines or vaccine delivery agents. The ability to treat diseases using viruses, often referred to as virotherapy, has become the subject of intensive research in recent years.