This Week in Virology

TWiV 193: Live at ASV in Madison

July 29, 2012

ASV Madison 2012 Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Rich Condit, Carolyn Coyne, and Sara Sawyer

Vincent, Rich, Carolyn, and Sara recorded TWiV at the 31st Annual Meeting of the American Society for Virology in Madison, where they discussed genetic conflict between viral and human genes, and how the placenta protects the fetus against viral infection.

Click the arrow above to play, or right-click to download TWiV 193 (56 MB .mp3, 78 minutes).

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Links for this episode:

ASV 2012 at Madison, WI
Photographs of ASV 2012
Rock band Herpetic Legion plays at ASV 2012
TWiV on Facebook
Letters read on TWiV 193

Weekly Science Picks

Rich – Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson
Vincent – Biochemistry Revealed

Listener Pick of the Week

Matlock – The BioDigital Human
Matt – Scientists create jellyfish from rat cells

Send your virology questions and comments to [email protected].

TWiV 192: Viral tertulia

July 22, 2012

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Alan Dove, and Rich Condit

Vincent, Alan, and Rich answer listener email about bioinformatics, insects, influenza, laboratory classes, commensalism, reproducibility of data, and more.

Click the arrow above to play, or right-click to download TWiV 192 (84 MB .mp3, 117 minutes).

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Links for this episode:

Vaccinia virus sequence from patient with vaccine complication (pdf)
The evolution of intellectual freedom (thanks, Robin!)
Free access to British scientific research (Guardian)
xTAG respiratory viral panel
Houston rabies case (Statesman)
Tertulia (Wikipedia)
TWiV on Facebook
Letters read on TWiV 192

Weekly Science Picks

Alan – The Microbial Olympics (supplementary information)
Rich – PharmaJet needle free injection system
Vincent – Microbes and Evolution by Roberto Kolter and Stanley Maloy (paperback and Kindle)

Listener Pick of the Week

Varun – Agile Gene by Matt Ridley
Sizun – Plague Inc
Ricardo – TED-ED
Kristopher – Ed Yong on Econtalk

Send your virology questions and comments to [email protected].

TWiV 191: When two rights make a wrong

July 15, 2012

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Alan Dove, Rich Condit, and Nissin Moussatche

Nissin joins the TWiV crew to discuss an outbreak of lethal disease among Cambodian children, and recombination among attenuated herpesvirus vaccines leading to pathogenic viruses.

Click the arrow above to play, or right-click to download TWiV 191 (71 MB .mp3, 99 minutes).

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Weekly Science Picks

Alan – H5N1 genetic changes inventory
Rich – Mythbusters: Diet Coke and Mentos (YouTube channel)
Nissin – The Pox and the Covenant by Tony Williams, and Tereza Batista, Tired of War by Jorge Amado
Vincent – FAQ: The ‘snake bite’ portion of your thesis defense

Listener Pick of the Week

Gopal – All’s not fair in science and publishing
Luis – The Origin of AIDS by Jacques Pepin (Nature review)
Sven – Visualizing information flow in science

Send your virology questions and comments to [email protected].

TWiV 190: The second ferret of the Apocalypse

July 1, 2012

ferret Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Alan Dove, and Kathy Spindler

Vincent, Alan, and Kathy review selection of influenza H5N1 viruses that can transmit among ferrets by aerosol.

Click the arrow above to play, or right-click to download TWiV 190 (63 MB .mp3, 97 minutes).

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Links for this episode:

Airborne transmission of H5N1 among ferrets (Science)
Potential for H5N1 evolution (Science)
H5N1 (Science)
The ferrets of fear
Jim’s podcast list (pdf)
TWiV on Facebook
Letters read on TWiV 190

Weekly Science Picks

Kathy – Wind map
Vincent – The A-Z of Epidemiology (YouTube)

Listener Pick of the Week

Kristoffer – How to read a paper
Neva – Electricity from viruses

Send your virology questions and comments to [email protected].

TWiV 189: Five postdocs in Glasgow

June 24, 2012

hbv architecture Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Vanessa Cowton, Mary Holton, Mark Robinson, Swetha Vijayakrishnan, and Gavin Wilkie

Vincent returns to the Centre for Virus Research at the University of Glasgow and meets with postdocs to discuss their science and their careers.

Click the arrow above to play, or right-click to download TWiV 189 (52 MB .mp3, 72 minutes).

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Links for this episode:

MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research
Stop CMV
Photos of my Glasgow visit (Facebook)
TWiV on Facebook

Send your virology questions and comments to [email protected].

TWiV 188: Haggis, single malt, and viruses

June 17, 2012

Centre for Virus Research Glasgow Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Massimo Palmarini, John MacLauchlan, Emma Thomson, and Hande Harmanci.

Vincent travels to Scotland to meet with members of the Centre for Virus Research at the University of Glasgow to discuss their work on hepatitis C virus and jaagsiekte sheep retrovirus.

Click the arrow above to play, or right-click to download TWiV 188 (78 MB .mp3, 108 minutes).

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Links for this episode:

MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research
Aaron Shatkin, 77 (virology blog)
Photos of my Glasgow visit (Facebook and VirusTalk)
TWiV on Facebook
Letters read on TWiV 188

Weekly Science Picks

Vincent – Microbe art

Listener Pick of the Week

Judi – Cell Imaging (Mac App Store)

Send your virology questions and comments to [email protected].

TWiV 187: The mummy

June 10, 2012

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello and Rich Condit

Vincent and Rich discuss recovery of a hepatitis B viral genome from a 16th century Korean mummy, and personal omics profiling of an individual over a 14 month period.

Click the arrow above to play, or right-click to download TWiV 187 (64 MB .mp3, 88 minutes).

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Weekly Science Picks

Rich – The Checklist by Atul Gawande
Vincent – Artologica

Listener Pick of the Week

David – Cracking your genetic code (Nova)
Josh – The nuclearization of biology is a threat to health and security (pdf)

Send your virology questions and comments to [email protected].

TWiV 186: From Buda to stump grinding

June 3, 2012

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Alan Dove, and Rich Condit

The TWiV chiefs tackle reader email about how to pronounce Buda, Texas, grinding tree stumps, and much more.

Click the arrow above to play, or right-click to download TWiV 186 (82 MB .mp3, 114 minutes).

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Links for this episode:

Detecting antibodies or antigens by ELISA
Peter Wildy Prize
Biosafety levels
Baltimore classification at Viral Zone
TWiV on Facebook
Letters read on TWiV 186

Weekly Science Picks

Alan – World Wide Lightning Location Network
Rich – Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
Vincent – The Ocelloid

Listener Pick of the Week

lafrenchfille – whatshouldwecallgradschool
Neva – Antiviral drugs by Carl Zimmer
Sergio – APSnet

Send your virology questions and comments to [email protected].

TWiV 185: Dead parrots and live Wildcats

May 27, 2012

plaque fort Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Sarah Connolly, Andrew Karaba, Robert Lamb, and Greg Smith

Vincent visits with members of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Northwestern University School of Medicine to discuss their work on herpesviruses and parainfluenzaviruses.