This Week in Virology

TWiV 175: More than one way to skin a virus

March 18, 2012

microneedle Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Alan Dove, and Matt Frieman

Vincent, Alan, and Matt discuss herpes simplex encephalitis in children with innate immune deficiency, and the local response to microneedle-based influenza skin immunization.

Click the arrow above to play, or right-click to download TWiV 175 (57 MB .mp3, 80 minutes).

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Links for this episode:

Herpes encephalitis in children with TRIF deficiency (J Clin Inv)
Toll-like receptor and cytosolic pattern recognition receptors
Skin responses to influenza microneedle vaccine (mBio)
Microneedles
Fluzone intradermal influenza vaccine
QDot nanocrystal technology
TWiV on Facebook
Letters read on TWiV 175

Weekly Science Picks

Matt – Phage and the Origins of Molecular Biology
Alan – Digital Imagine Institute
Vincent – iPad apps Goodreader and Notability

Listener Pick of the Week

Jane –Smoking Ears and Screaming Teeth by Trevor Norton

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

TWiV 174: Dog runs and mooing miRs

March 11, 2012

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Alan Dove, and Rich Condit

Vincent, Alan, and Rich consider whether pet dogs might transmit human noroviruses, and an RNA virus microRNA that might be involved in oncogenesis.

Click the arrow above to play, or right-click to download TWiV 174 (62 MB .mp3, 86 minutes).

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Weekly Science Picks

Rich – NOAA Buoy Data
Alan – Autism’s False Prophets by Paul Offit
Vincent – Media Mining

Listener Pick of the Week

Mark – How the West fueled the AIDS epidemic
Henry – Regenesis
Rick – Biopunk: DIY scientists hack the software of life by Marcus Wohlsen

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

TWiV 173: Going to bat for flu research

March 4, 2012

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Alan Dove, Rich Condit, Michael Walsh, and Ashlee Bennett

The TWiVites discuss seroevidence for human infection with avian influenza H5N1, and the discovery of a new influenza virus in Guatemalan bats.

Click the arrow above to play, or right-click to download TWiV 173 (85 MB .mp3, 117 minutes).

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Links for this episode:

Seroevidence for human H5N1 infection (Science)
Mammalian-transmissible H5N1 (mBio)
New information about ferret-adapted H5N1 (NY Times, virology blog)
New influenza virus from fruit bats (PNAS)
Elsevier abandons open access assault (The Scientist)
Le virus le plus dangereux?
TWiV on Facebook
Letters read on TWiV 173

Weekly Science Picks

Ashlee – AskScience (Reddit)
Michael – HealthMap (iPhone and Android app)
Rich – H5N1 research discussion at ASMBiodefense
Alan – El Yunque National Forest
Vincent – The Journal of Global Health

Listener Pick of the Week

Judi – NSF visualization challenge

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

TWiV 172: Two can be as bad as one

February 26, 2012

tetramer staining Hosts: Vincent Racaniello and Kathy Spindler

Vincent and Kathy discuss how a virus may cause disease distant from its replication site, then review a day in the life of a senior microbiology professor.

Click the arrow above to play, or right-click to download TWiV 172 (74 MB .mp3, 102 minutes).

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Links for this episode:

Celsius vs Centigrade
Neuropathogenesis during polymicrobial infection (PLoS Pathogens)
Tetramer staining (pdf)
One
TWiV on Facebook
Letters read on TWiV 172

Weekly Science Picks

Kathy – Science prize for inquiry-based instruction (Alberts editorial, second winner)
Vincent – The long and winding road to a Ph.D.

Listener Pick of the Week

Greg – Correlation

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

TWiV 171: One is the loneliest number

February 19, 2012

single virion genomics Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Alan Dove, Dickson Despommier, and Matt Frieman

Matt joins the TWiVarians to review virus production in single cells and single virion genomics.

Click the arrow above to play, or right-click to download TWiV 171 (67 MB .mp3, 92 minutes).

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Links for this episode:

H5N1 results will be published (NY Times)
Virus production in single cells then and now
Single virion genomics (PLoS One)
Multiple displacement amplification (Wikipedia)
Ranavirus killing turtles, tadpoles in Maryland (Washington Post)
Three Dog Night
TWiV on Facebook
Letters read on TWiV 171

Weekly Science Picks

Matt – H5N1 research discussion
Dickson – The Golden Wand of Medicine by Walter J. Friedlander
Alan – Imagine Science Films
Vincent – E. coli: Good, Bad, and Deadly

Listener Pick of the Week

Daniel – The scale of the Universe
Stefan – A Legacy of Achievement

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

TWiV 170: From variolous effluvia to VLPs

February 12, 2012

cow-pock Hosts: Alan Dove, Rich Condit, and Dickson Despommier

Alan, Rich, and Dickson discuss Edward Jenner’s paper on cowpox vaccine, then move 200 years later to modern vaccines against norovirus, influenza H5N1, and more.

Click the arrow above to play, or right-click to download TWiV 170 (72 MB .mp3, 100 minutes).

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Links for this episode:

Norton Zinder, 83 (Reuters)
Jenner’s cowpox vaccine paper (Bartleby, Gutenberg)
Norovirus VLP vaccine (NEJM)
Plant-grown H5N1 VLP vaccine (Reuters, PLoS One)
Plant-grown norovirus VLP
Hexavalent pediatric vaccine
TWiV on Facebook
Letters read on TWiV 170

Weekly Science Picks

Dickson – High-speed photography of falling drop
Rich – Biotechnology Research in an Age of Terrorism (NAP)
Alan – Lab Report videos (YouTube)

Listener Pick of the Week

Jim – The Blind Spot

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

TWiV 169: Epidemiology causes conclusions (p less than 0.01)

February 5, 2012

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Dickson Despommier, Rich Condit, Alan Dove, and Michael Walsh

Michael and the TWiV team review epidemiology basics, including fatality ratios.

Click the arrow above to play, or right-click to download TWiV 169 (64 MB .mp3, 152 minutes).

Right-click this link to download only our discussion on how to read a science paper (22 MB .mp3, 30 minutes).

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Links for this episode:

How to read a science paper – from this episode (mp3)
How to read a science paper – transcript (pdf)
Michael’s blog and podcast
Epidemiology literature critique (PowerPoint)
Seven mistakes in epidemiology (ETE)
Snow cholera map
TWiV on Facebook
Letters read on TWiV 169

Weekly Science Picks

Michael – Love my epi
Dickson – Bacteria array detects arsenic
Rich – Dunning-Kruger effect
Alan – Environmental Economics
Vincent – Don’t censor influenza research

Listener Pick of the Week

Simon – The Great Mortality by John Kelly

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

TWiV 168: Super CalTech prophylaxis and ferret runny noses

January 29, 2012

adeno-associated virus Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Dickson Despommier, Rich Condit, Alan Dove, and Welkin Johnson

Welkin joins the TWiV team for a discussion of HIV prophylaxis using vectored antibodies, and the influenza H5N1 virus studies in ferrets that were not redacted.

Click the arrow above to play, or right-click to download TWiV 168 (59 MB .mp3, 98 minutes).

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Links for this episode:

Vectored HIV immunoprophylaxis (Nature)
Vectored immunoprophylaxis – the Movie (YouTube)
Adeno-associated virus (Wikipedia)
In vitro evolution of H5N1 towards human receptor specificity (Virology)
Endogenous viral genes non-essential in chicken (Nature)
Rates of HIV transmission per coital act (J Inf Dis)
TWiV on Facebook
Letters read on TWiV 168

Weekly Science Picks

Welkin – Virtual PI (Nature)
Dickson – Drain the Ocean
Rich – Nova: To the Moon
Alan – Robert Falcon Scott on Twitter and the Terra Nova expedition
Vincent – Hello, Mr. Chips (I, Cringely)