This Week in Virology

TWiV 180: Throwing IFIT at flu and holding a miR to HCV

April 22, 2012

mir122 Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Alan Dove, and Rich Condit

Vincent, Alan, and Rich review association of an interferon-induced protein with severe influenza, and stabilization of HCV RNA by a microRNA.

Click the arrow above to play, or right-click to download TWiV 180 (71 MB .mp3, 99 minutes).

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Weekly Science Picks

Alan – Micro Empire (Vimeo)
Rich – Census of marine life
Vincent – Pinterest

Listener Pick of the Week

Mark – The Secret Life of Plankton (YouTube)

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

TWiV 179: Was ist ein Virus?

April 15, 2012

hornworm parasitized by wasp Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Alan Dove, Rich Condit, and Gertrud Radu

Gertrud joins the TWiVoners to review how dengue virus infection of mosquitoes alters blood feeding behavior, and gene therapy as practiced by parasitoid wasps.

Click the arrow above to play, or right-click to download TWiV 179 (76 MB .mp3, 105 minutes).

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Links for this episode:

Renato Dulbecco, 1914-2012 (virology blog)
William Jarrett, 83 (thanks, Lynn Enquist)
Dengue virus infection of mosquitoes alters their behavior (PLoS Path)
Does dengue make mosquitoes thirstier for blood? (NY Times)
Polydnaviruses of braconid wasps (Science)
Making nice with viruses (Science)
Viral and wasp genes involved in symbiotic replication (J Virol)
Amazing parasitic wasp images
The Far Side cartoon on mosquitoes (gif)
TWiV on Facebook
Letters read on TWiV 179

Weekly Science Picks

Gertrud – Bat on a plane! (MMWR)
Alan – The Rings of Earth (YouTube)
Rich – Giant Magellan telescope
Vincent – Hepatitis C new drug pipeline

Listener Pick of the Week

Ricardo – Evolution: The Natural History of Animal Skeletons
Peter – Self-assembly line (YouTube)

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

TWiV 178: T-Sharp on how tequila mosquito

April 8, 2012

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Alan Dove, Rich Condit, and Tyler Sharp

The TWiValians meet up with Tyler Sharp for a discussion on the Epidemic Intelligence Service and controlling dengue.

Click the arrow above to play, or right-click to download TWiV 178 (72 MB .mp3, 99 minutes).

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Links for this episode:

2010 dengue epidemic in Puerto Rico
Marshall Islands dengue outbreak (one and two)
Photo of Tyler by Loren Rodgers
TWiV shout-out by NPR and CIDRAP
NSABB reverses decision on H5N1 publication
TWiV on Facebook
Letters read on TWiV 178

Weekly Science Picks

Tyler – Co-infection with dengue and Leptospira (Emerging Inf Dis)
Alan – The Winged Scourge (YouTube)
Rich – Deepsea Challenge
Vincent – Why did a US advisory board reverse its stance? (Ed Yong)

Listener Pick of the Week

Sasha – Microfluidic Future
Adam – The Conversation
Jim – ENIAC Programmers Project

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

TWiV 177: Live in Dublin

April 1, 2012

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Connor Bamford, Wendy Barclay, Richard Elliott, and Ron Fouchier

A discussion of avian influenza H5N1 transmission experiments in ferrets and novel bunyaviruses at the 2012 Spring Conference of the Society for General Microbiology in Dublin, Ireland.

Click the arrow above to play, or right-click to download TWiV 177 (47 MB .mp3, 66 minutes).

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Links for this episode:

Restricted data on H5N1 transmission (Science)
Novel bunyavirus in China (NEJM and TWiV 127)
Ten things about Schmallenberg virus (Microbiology Bytes)
NSABB reverses decision on H5N1 papers (virology blog)
TWiV on Facebook
Letters read on TWiV 177
Video of this episode – view above or at YouTube

Weekly Science Picks

Connor – Wellcome Trust Science Writing Prize 2012
Vincent – Thoughts on academic scientists giving media interviews

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

twiv dublin 2012

TWiV 176: Ave, magi virorum!

March 25, 2012

twiv email Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Alan Dove, and Rich Condit

Vincent, Alan, and Rich answer listener email about MS, CFS, EBV, B cells, virii, influenza B, scientific papers, and more.

Click the arrow above to play, or right-click to download TWiV 176 (62 MB .mp3, 86 minutes).

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Weekly Science Picks

Rich – Alan Alda’s Flame Challenge (NY Times article, Science editorial)
Alan – ChronoZoom
Vincent – Academic Publishing is Broken by Michael P. Taylor

Listener Pick of the Week

Joel – Fighting a dengue outbreak by Tyler M. Sharp (parts one and two)
Sven-Urban – Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Send your virology questions and comments (email or mp3 file) to [email protected], or call them in to 908-312-0760. You can also post articles that you would like us to discuss at microbeworld.org and tag them with twiv.

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.