Helper virus
Form of virus
A helper virus is a virus that allows an otherwise-deficient coinfecting virus to replicate. These can be naturally occurring as with Hepatitis D virus, which requires Hepatitis B virus to coinfect cells in order to replicate. Helper viruses are also commonly used to replicate and spread viral vectors for gene expression and gene therapy.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Helper virus”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
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