There does not seem to be a lot of information about this.
All the texts talk about the lytic and lysogenic stage but research leads me to belief that the lysogenic stage has only been observed in some bacteriophages.
Do we know of any human viruses that lay dormant outside of an infectious stage?
Is there any way for this virus to move from person to person while it is in this stage?
Herpesviruses can enter latency. In that stage, their genetic information is present in infected cells as an individual molecule, the episome, but there are no infectious particles. [URL=“Plasmid - Wikipedia”]
Any other thought on this?
Your search problem is one of field-specific terminology. Lysogeny is a process that was discovered and studied in bacteriophage. Thus, the term is really only used by those studying phage. An analogous process was discovered in animal viruses (probably plant viruses too, but my knowledge of plant viruses is limited), but it was called latency or dormancy or integration.
Herpesvirus, as mentioned above, is the classic example. Varicella zoster virus is in the same family and also has a long dormant phase. HIV is another example, where the virus integrates into the host genome and is dormant for long periods.
Another search term that may be of interest to you is “cryptic virus” or “provirus”. Basically, these are DNA sequences that were found when we started sequencing full genomes. They are homologous (but not identical) to known viruses. They are thought to be remnants of ancient viruses that integrated into the host genome. As far as we know, they can’t be activated due to sequence degradation over time, hence the “cryptic” terminology.
These provirus sequences are particularly problematic for the field of xenotransplantion (i.e.- putting tissue from one species into another species). For example, pigs have certain proviruses that they carry in their genomes which do them no harm. However, there is concern that if we put a pig heart valve in a human we could change the conditions such that a pig provirus is activated. It’s potentially a biological Pandora’s box. As far as I know, there is no evidence that such activation occurs, but the worry is still reasonable.
Good point! Particularly worrying is the fact that transplant recipients usually are treated with strong immunosuppressants to prevent rejection. This could conceivably cause reactivation of porcine endogenous retroviruses (or PERVs for short); it certainly does reactivate herpesviruses.
I saw a documentary oh, about 7 or 8 years ago now, about a young woman who was paralyzed from the chest down, and received an experimental injection of pig neural stem cells to see if they could grow and bridge the gap, restoring some movement. One of the conditions of the treatment was that she had to agree to never have unprotected sex. Ever. For the rest of her life. She could never have kids, even through artificial means, either. Both conditions were set to prevent the possible transmission of any cryptic porcine viruses.
Hmm, interesting. I wonder what would happen if she did, though - legally speaking.