This Week in Virology

TWiV 218: Monkeys turning valves and pushing buttons

February 3, 2013

Bakugan Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Alan Dove, and Welkin Johnson

Vincent, Alan, and Welkin discuss how endogenous retroviruses in mice are held in check by the immune response.

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Download TWiV 218 (64 MB .mp3, 89 min)
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Links for this episode:

Kuan-Teh Jeang, 54
Resurrection of ERVs (Nature)
Toll-like receptors control ERVs (Immunity)
Retroviral danger from within (Immunity)
Ancient viruses wreak havoc (The Scientist)
Letters read on TWiV 218

Weekly Science Picks

Welkin – Viruses: Essential Agents of Life (review at STC)
Alan – Infinity Imagined
Vincent – Spaceship built for son

Listener Pick of the Week

Amanda – Written? Kitten!
Kevin – Protein synthesis: An epic (YouTube)
Daria – The Baltimore Scheme

Send your virology questions and comments (email or mp3 file) to [email protected]

TWiV 217: I just flu in and my arms are shot

January 27, 2013

vaccine vial Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Alan Dove, Rich Condit, and Dickson Despommier

Vincent, Alan, Rich, and Dickson review influenza vaccines.

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Download TWiV 217 (69 MB .mp3, 95 min)
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Links for this episode:

FDA licensed flu vaccines
Seasonal influenza vaccine distributed
How flu vaccine strains are selected (one, two)
WHO report on flu vaccine strain selection (pdf)
Derek Smith on antigenic mapping
Salk’s 1945 influenza vaccine
TIV preparation: Fluzone, Agriflu, Fluvirin, Fluarix, Flulaval, Afluria (pdfs)
LAIV preparation (pdf)
Efficacy of flu vaccine 2012-13 (MMWR, virology blog)
Meta-analysis of flu vaccine efficacy (Lancet)
Two new flu vaccines FDA approved
Flublok
Flublok clinical trial
Pandemrix and narcolepsy (Yahoo, PLoS One, PLoS One)
CIDRAP analysis of flu vaccines
Letters read on TWiV 217

Weekly Science Picks

Rich – Repoopulate (original article), Robogut (new clinical trial)
Alan – WTF, Evolution?
Dickson – The Beauty and Benefits of Science
Vincent – Supercomputing modeling of poliovirus

Listener Pick of the Week

Bjorn, Marshall, Meaghan – Glass sculptures of Luke Jerram

Send your virology questions and comments (email or mp3 file) to [email protected]

TWiV 216: Processing VIRALGUUAACACCAGRNA

January 20, 2013

splicing Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Alan Dove, Rich Condit, and Kathy Spindler

Vincent, Alan, Rich, and Kathy resume the virology 101 series with a discussion of RNA capping, splicing, and export.

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Download TWiV 216 (67 MB .mp3, 93 min)
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Links for this episode:

Slides for this episode (pdf)
Spliced Ad 2 late mRNAs (Cell)
An amazing sequence arrangement (Cell)
Adenovirus late mRNA undecanucleotide (Cell)
Aaron Shatkin, 72 (virology blog)
Schrödinger’s cat (Wikipedia)
Letters read on TWiV 216

Weekly Science Picks

Rich – Linus Pauling’s explanation of science (YouTube)
Alan – Underwater experiments
Kathy – I’m a virus (YouTube)
Vincent – Stem cells (Bizarro Comics)

Listener Pick of the Week

Tom – The President’s Analyst
Danielle – Overly honest methods (HuffPost and ASBMB Today)

Send your virology questions and comments (email or mp3 file) to [email protected]

TWiV 215: Illuminating rabies and unwrapping a SARI

January 13, 2013

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Alan Dove, and Kathy Spindler

Vincent, Alan, and Kathy review the finding that rabies virus infection alters but does not kill neurons, and provide an update on the novel coronavirus in the Middle East.

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Download TWiV 215 (66 MB .mp3, 92 min)
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Weekly Science Picks

Alan – I’m a Scientist – The Film
Kathy – Humorous units of measurement (Wikipedia)
Vincent – Open access must enable open use (Nature)

Listener Pick of the Week

Tarwin – Plague Inc.

Send your virology questions and comments (email or mp3 file) to [email protected]

TWiV 214: This is your brain on polyomavirus

January 6, 2013

raccoon tumor Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Alan Dove, and Kathy Spindler

Vincent, Alan, and Kathy discuss how coagulation factor X binding to adenovirus activates the innate immune system, and a novel polyomavirus associated with brain tumors in raccoons.

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Download TWiV 214 (56 MB .mp3, 78 min)
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Links for this episode:

Coagulation factor X activates innate immunity to adenovirus (Science)
A decorated virus cannot hide (Science)
FX binding sites on hexon (Blood)
Engineering adenoviruses for gene therapy (YouTube)
Reflecting on goals for Science
Polyomavirus associated with raccoon brain tumors (EID)
MPNST
Moore tumor viruses – TWiV 160
Treating CLL with lentivirus vectors (NEJM)
Letters read on TWiV 214

Weekly Science Picks

Alan – Parasite of the Day
Kathy – Tour of International Space Station
Vincent – Earth as Art

Listener Pick of the Week

Robin – Angell on Big Pharma
Michael – Flu jokes
Jim – Database of Ted talks; Downloadable Ted Talks

Send your virology questions and comments (email or mp3 file) to [email protected]

TWiV 213: Not bad for a hobby

December 30, 2012

TWiV Team in BSL4 suits Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Rich Condit, Alan Dove, and Kathy Spindler

In their final episode of the year, the TWiV team reviews twelve cool virology stories from 2012.

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Download TWiV 213 (88 MB .mp3, 122 min)
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Twelve virology stories from 2012:

H5N1 (TWiV 190, 182, 177, 173, 168)
Polymorphisms that control susceptibility (TWiV 175, 180)
New virus receptors (TWiV 166, 210)
XMRV: Last nail in the coffin (TWiV special)
Polio eradication troubles in Pakistan (NY Times one, two, three; virology blog)
Biomedical research crisis (TWiV 208, 184, 189, 194)
Polydnaviruses in parasitoid wasps (TWiV 179)
Carolyn Coyne’s placental barrier story (TWiV 193)
Touring NEIDL (TWiV 200)
Epidemiology (TWiV 169, 178)
A good year for virus hunting (173, 183, 195, 196, 198, 199, 204)
Pox accordion (TWiV 198)

Weekly Science Picks

Rich – Our Mr. Sun (IMDB entry) (wiki)
Alan – PubReader from NCBI announcement and instructions
Kathy – Popular Mechanics 110 picks for the next 110 years
Vincent – 366 days: Nature’s 10

Listener Pick of the Week

Matt – The flu vaccine controversy

Send your virology questions and comments (email or mp3 file) to [email protected]

TWiV Special: Ignorance with Stuart Firestein

December 29, 2012

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello and Stuart Firestein

Vincent and Stuart discuss why ignorance – all of what we don’t know, and even what we don’t know we don’t know – is the driving force of science.

Download: 58 MB .mp3, 81 min

Links for this episode:

Transcript of this episode
Ignorance: How it drives Science by Stuart Firestein
Ignorance website

Send your virology questions and comments (email or mp3 file) to [email protected]

TWiV 212: Apocalypse TWiV 122112 212

December 23, 2012

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Rich Condit, Alan Dove, and Kathy Spindler

The TWiVerers answer listener email about genetically modified chickens, a hendra vaccine for horses, online education, curing color blindness, Roosevelt and polio, Th cells, and much more.

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Download TWiV 212 (78 MB .mp3, 108 min)
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Weekly Science Picks

Rich – Overview
Alan – Notes towards the complete works of Shakespeare
Kathy – Correlation vs. Causation (#1, #2, #3)
Vincent – Periodically inspired

Listener Pick of the Week

Mark – Life of a Nature paper
Ricardo – Things don’t go viral

Send your virology questions and comments (email or mp3 file) to [email protected]

TWiV 211: Viruses r us

December 16, 2012

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Rich Condit, Alan Dove, and Kathy Spindler

The TWiV four discuss an mRNA-based influenza vaccine, and a phage tubulin that forms a filamentous array in the host cell that is needed for positioning viral DNA.

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Download TWiV 211 (70 MB .mp3, 97 min)
Listen on your mobile device with the Microbeworld app
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Links for this episode:

mRNA vaccine against influenza (Nat Biotech)
Phage tubulin assembles dynamic filaments (Cell)
Viral skeleton (The Scientist)
Not unorganized bags of enzymes (TWiM 28)
Bacterial cytoskeleton (FEMS Micro Rev)
Triangulation number (jpg)
Letters read on TWiV 211

Weekly Science Picks

Rich – Ocean Global Shark Tracker
Alan – The Field Book Project
Kathy – How to manipulate an army of zombies
Vincent – Science sculpture

Listener Pick of the Week

Stephen – WEHI.TV

Send your virology questions and comments (email or mp3 file) to [email protected]

TWiV 210: Bond, covalent bond

December 9, 2012

VPg linked to RNA Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Rich Condit, Dickson Despommier, Alan Dove, and Kathy Spindler

The complete TWiV team reviews identification of the cell receptor for hepatitis B and D viruses, and the cell enzyme that cleaves the genome-linked protein from picornaviral RNA.

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Download TWiV 210 (67 MB .mp3, 93 min)
Listen on your mobile device with the Microbeworld app
Subscribe to TWiV (free): iTunes, RSS feed, email