Vincent, Dick, and Saul talk about discoveries in virology that have had a major impact on the field. Sem•i•nal (adjective): strongly influencing later developments. Note: There are two HPV vaccines on the market: Gardasil (quadrivalent, types 6, 11, 16, 18) and Cervarix (bivalent, types 16 and 18). Links for this episode: Gates Foundation donates to polio eradication effort. Testing a bivalent oral poliovirus vaccine in India . We played a clip from net@night episode 83 . I wrote about Jonathan...
Jan 24, 2009•58 min
Vincent and Jeremy, in Saanen, Switzerland, review the 19th Challenge in Virology meeting, and implications of a new HIV-1 sequence from 1960 for the origin of AIDS. Links for this episode: NY Times article on Offit vaccine book. Nature paper on new 1960 HIV-1 sequence. Massive polio immunization in Pakistan . PLoS paper on T cell responses to HERVs in HIV-1 infection. Science blog of the week: Eye on DNA by Dr. Hsien-Hsien Lei Science podcast pick of the week: Persiflager’s Infectious Disease P...
Jan 18, 2009•1 hr 4 min
Vincent, Dick, and Alan converse about hantavirus spread by large deer mice, why the 1918 influenza virus replicates in the lower respiratory tract, measles in Europe, and the growing resistance of influenza virus to antivirals. Links for this episode: MMWR, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report from CDC. Larger, older deer mice spread hantavirus . Viral RNA polymerase complex promotes optimal growth of 1918 virus in the lower respiratory tract of ferrets. Measles in Europe: an epidemiological a...
Jan 13, 2009•54 min
Vincent and Alan discuss a viral upper respiratory tract infection, transmission of H5N1 influenza virus, death of an HIV denialist, and the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Links in this episode: PLoS Pathogens paper on transmission of H5N1 influenza virus. Ebola outbreak in DRC reported by ProMedMail . Death of HIV denialist . BioCrowd , a network for bioscientists. Molecules , the iPhone/iPod Touch app to display molecules. Science blog of the week: ViroBlogy Science po...
Jan 05, 2009•54 min
Vincent and Alan talk about President-elect Obama’s choices for his science advisors, SARS sensationalism, a new enteric picornavirus, and the top 10 virology stories of 2008. Obama’s science advisors ( Yahoo story ) CDC RSS feed on influenza PNAS paper on a new enteric picornavirus TWiV’s top 10 virology stories of 2008: 1. Nobel Prize in Medicine to Montagnier, Barré-Sinoussi, and zur Hausen 2. AIDS elite controllers partly explained 3. Cancellation of PAVE HIV-1 vaccine trial 4. Gut homing re...
Dec 28, 2008•50 min
Vincent, Alan, and Angela discuss Kuru, prions in milk, ancient lentiviruses found in the chromosomes of lemurs, a respiratory syncytial virus vaccine failure in the 1960s, and recent outbreaks of H5N1 influenza in chickens. Links for this episode: D. Carleton Gajdusek obituary in the NY Times. We forgot to mention that he won the 1976 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work on Kuru. PLoS Pathogens article on prions in sheep milk. PNAS article on endogenous lemur lentivirus Nature Medicine article ...
Dec 21, 2008•45 min
Vincent, Alan, and Jeremy discuss why certain AIDS patients, called ‘elite controllers’ or ‘long-term non-progressors’, do not develop disease, why mosquitoes infected with Sindbis virus remain healthy, and the continuing outbreaks of norovirus gastroenteritis. Links for this episode: Immunity article on elite controllers. PNAS article on protected mosquitoes. The word quarantine comes from the seventeenth century Venetian quarantena , which means forty day period. Science podcast pick of the we...
Dec 13, 2008•1 hr 8 min
Vincent, DIck, and Alan chat about reconstruction of a bat SARS-like coronavirus, herpesviruses that are killing elephants in zoos, and a plan to eradicate AIDS in ten years. Links for this episode: The Virology Network at socialmedian.com. The bat SARS-like coronavirus: scientific article in PNAS, and the Wired Science article . NY Times Editorial on eradicating AIDS. Herpesviruses killing elephants . Science podcast pick of the week: Futures in Biotech . Science book of the week: Principles of...
Dec 04, 2008•40 min
Vincent and Dick recall the discovery of Lassa virus in Africa in 1969. A non-fictional account of the story, ‘Fever’, written by John G. Fuller and published in 1974, inspired Vincent to become a virologist. Part of the story took place at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital (now Columbia University Medical Center), where both Vincent and Dick are employed. Dick remembers many of the key players in this medical drama. Links for this episode: Click here to view to cover of ‘Fever!’ Buy a used copy of...
Nov 22, 2008•41 min
Vincent and Dick converse about warfare preventing immunization of 120,000 children in Afghanistan, bone marrow transplant curing AIDS patient, Google tracking flu, measles outbreak in Gibraltar, using viruses to make batteries, and small mosquitoes and Dengue. Article on using viruses to make batteries (PubMed: Virus-enabled synthesis and assembly of nanowires for lithium ion battery electrodes). Science podcast pick of the week: NY Times Science Times ( iTunes link )....
Nov 14, 2008•37 min
Vincent, Dick, and Aidan discuss how viral infections play prominent roles in notable video games. Three games are discussed: World of Warcraft , Pandemic II , and Bioshock . An article on how World of Warcraft became a model for the transmission of virus infections was published in Lancet Infectious Diseases . The title of the article is “The untapped potential of virtual game worlds to shed light on real world epidemics.” After we did the netcast we learned of a game for the iPhone called ‘Vir...
Nov 07, 2008•51 min
Hosts: Vincent Racaniello and Dickson Despommier Dickson was at Pop!Tech last week. Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon . US Geological Survey Disease Maps . CDC page on Hendra and Nipah viruses . The flying fox (Google image search) . Vincent’s virology course . Vincent’s texbook is Principles of Virology , third edition, ASM Press (available December 2008). Science podcast pick of the week: Brain Science Podcast ....
Oct 30, 2008•43 min
Host: Vincent Racaniello Special guest: Saul Silverstein Dickson Despommier is away this week at Pop!Tech . CDC pages on herpes and zoster (shingles).
Oct 24, 2008•50 min
Hosts: Vincent Racaniello and Dickson Despommier CDC page on rabies Dick’s Ecology 101 course Ecotone defined Negri bodies defined (down on the page)...
Oct 17, 2008•37 min
Hosts: Vincent Racaniello and Dickson Despommier Article on the mortgage crisis and West Nile virus in Emerging Infectious Diseases. Environment-oriented review of Dengue. Dengue page at the World Health Organization....
Oct 02, 2008•43 min
Hosts: Vincent Racaniello and Dickson Despommier polioeradication.org for the latest information on the global state of polio. Abstract of the Science article on engineering a new polio vaccine: “Virus attenuation by genome-scale changes in codon pair bias”....
Sep 26, 2008•50 min
Hosts: Vincent Racaniello and Dickson Despommier . Buy “ West Nile Story ” by Dickson Despommier. ProMed Mail . The global reporting system for outbreaks of emerging infectious disease. PubMed . A service of the National Library of Medicine, includes over 14 million citations for biomedical articles back to the 1950s. West Nile page at Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Great maps of where the virus has been found....
Sep 24, 2008•1 hr 31 min
