Testicular immunology
Mumps is a viral disease which causes swelling of the salivary glands and testes. The mumps virus lives in the upper respiratory tract and spreads through direct contact with saliva. Prior to widespread vaccination programs, it was a common childhood disease. Mumps is generally not serious in children, but in adults, where sperm have matured in the testis, it can cause more severe complications, such as infertility.
Murine gammaherpesvirus 68
Murine gammaherpesvirus 68 (MHV-68) aka murid herpesvirus 68 is an isolate of Murid herpesvirus 4 which is a virus in the genus Rhadinovirus. It is a member of the subfamily Gammaherpesvirinae in the family of Herpesviridae. MHV-68 serves as a model for study of human gammaherpesviruses which cause significant human disease including B-cell lymphoma and Kaposi's sarcoma. The WUMS strain of MHV-68 was fully sequenced and annotated in 1997, and the necessity of most of its genes in viral replication was characterized by random transposon mutagenesis study