"viruses were my first [research] love"

Well, not exactly: transcriptional control, and especially during the earliest events of mammalian embryogenesis -call it "what starts it all"- was my first love. Adenovirus happened to be a very interesting probe to look into that. "My first love" - well, even this is inaccurate: protein structure and crystallography were even earlier loves (during B.Sc. days), followed by immunology. Transcriptional control and development came later, perhaps incorporating principles of both crystallography and immunology: the importance of macromolecular structure, and the crucial role of communication (scientifically usually referred to as "signalling").