Saving varicella from suicide

Varicella zoster virus (VZV) causes both varicella (chickenpox) and zoster (shingles). VZV spreads throughout the body, but it does so slowly, and virus only emerges extracellularly in the skin where it can spread to other hosts. That behavior is now explained by Zhenglun Zhu (Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA), Jason Chen, Anne Gershon, and Michael Gershon (Columbia University, New York, NY). They show that in most tissues VZV is diverted to late endosomes for destruction, but in the most superficial epidermal cells that cellular trafficking pathway is turned off, resulting in secretion of VZV.

Trafficking from the Golgi system to the late endosome is mediated by the cation-independent mannose 6-phosphate receptor (MPR^ci). MPR^ci has been implicated in both VZV entry (mannose 6-phosphate can block infection by free...