Columbia University microbiologist Stephen P. Goff urged caution in assuming that filopodia are necessarily behaving as a second mode of infecting cells with virus.

“It’s intriguing and a really cool observation,” Goff said. The study’s striking images show that the filopodia contain a lot of virus and that in the lab, inhibiting their growth seemed to reduce viral replication. This strongly suggests that filopodia are somehow amping up the virus’ ability to infect cells, he acknowledged.

“But we don’t yet know what stage [of infection] is affected” by the strange protrusions, he said. “It will be great fun to find out.”


"Really cool." "Great fun." Reminds me of the discussions around the possibility of "the end of the world" and the Trinity test.