mSphere of Influence: The integral art of resolving host-virus interactions

Elliott D. SoRelle studies viral infection and pathogenesis, specifically Epstein-Barr virus and its associated diseases, through the lens of single cell and spatial biology. In this mSphere of Influence article, he reflects on the essential value of art in biological research-and the frequent homology between the two. He incorporates themes from music and visual arts into a discussion of how three publications entitled "The cybernetics of development" by C. H. Waddington (<i>The Strategy of the Genes</i>, chapter 2, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315765471), "Epstein-Barr viral productive amplification reprograms nuclear architecture, DNA replication, and histone deposition" by Y.-F. Chiu et al. (Cell Host Microbe 14:607-618, 2013, 10.1016/j.chom.2013.11.009), and "Comprehensive integration of single-cell data" by T. Stuart et al. (Cell 177:1888-1902.e21, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2019.05.031) shape his scientific perspectives in single-cell virology and provide a conceptual framework for dissecting multifaceted host-virus interactions.