TWiV 18: Can a virus make you fat?

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Dick Despommier and Alan Dove

Vincent, Dick, and Alan discuss adenovirus type 36 and obesity, new influenza antiviral drugs, viral hemorrhagic septicemia virus of fish, and Ebola virus in pigs and pig farmers in the Phillipines.

Click the arrow above to play, or right-click to download TWiV #18 (35 MB .mp3, 50 minutes)

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Links for this episode:

Science blog of the week: Rubor Dolor Calor Tumor
Science podcast pick of the week: Originz
Science book of the week: Biohazard by Ken Alibek

Send your virology questions and comments to twiv@microbe.tv.

TWiV 17: Seminal discoveries in virology

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello and Dick Despommier

Guest: Saul Silverstein

Vincent, Dick, and Saul talk about discoveries in virology that have had a major impact on the field.

Click the arrow above to play, or right-click to download TWiV #17 (37 MB .mp3,  57 minutes)

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Links for this episode:

  • 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).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 Swift’s ‘Animalcules’ on virology blog.

Science blog of the week: Research Blogging
Science podcast pick of the week: Boston Museum of Science podcast
Science book of the week: The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher by Lewis Thomas

Send your virology questions and comments to twiv@microbe.tv.

TWiV 16: Virology in Saanen, HIV origins

Host: Vincent Racaniello

Guest: Jeremy Luban

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.

Click the arrow above to play, or right-click to download TWiV #16 (44 MB .mp3,  63 minutes)

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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 Podcast
Science book of the week: Microbe Hunters by by Paul de Kruif

TWiV is podcast of the week at net@night.

Send your virology questions and comments to twiv@microbe.tv

TWiV 15: Deer mice, Spanish flu, measles, antiviral resistance

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Dick Despommier, and Alan Dove

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.

Click the arrow above to play, or right-click to download TWiV #15 (37 MB .mp3,  53 minutes)

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Links for this episode:

Science blog of the week: Molecule of the Day
Science podcast pick of the week: Meet the Scientist by Merry Buckley
Science book of the week: The Great Influenza by John M. Barry

The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin – published 150 years ago.

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TWiV 14: Common cold, H5N1 transmission, HIV denial, Ebola

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello and Alan Dove

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.

Click the arrow above to play, or right-click to download TWiV #14 (37 MB .mp3, 53 minutes)

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Links for 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 podcast pick of the week: Astronomy Cast
Science book of the week: The Cutter Incident by Paul A. Offit, MD

Send your virology questions and comments to twiv@microbe.tv

TWiV 13: Top 10 virology stories of 2008

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello and Alan Dove

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.

Click the arrow above to play, or right-click to download TWiV #13 (34 MB .mp3, 49 minutes)

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Links for this episode:

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 receptor for HIV-1
5. New Ebola strain
6. New mosquito virus
7. How mosquitoes survive virus infection
8. Mouse model for Chikungunya
9. Genome sequences of 150 avian influenza virus strains
10.  Understanding the RS virus vaccine failure

Science blog of the week: Aetiology
Science podcast pick of the week: biobytes
Science book of the week: Principles of Virology, 3rd Edition by Flint, Enquist, Racaniello, and Skalka. Details on how to win a free copy here.

Send your virology questions and comments to twiv@microbe.tv

Have a great 2009!

TWiV 12: Prions, lemur lentiviruses, RS virus vaccine, H5N1

Host: Vincent Racaniello (Wikipedia entry, and photo with Hilary Koprowski)

Guests: Alan Dove and Angela Rasmussen

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.

Click the arrow above to play, or right-click to download TWiV #12 (30.8 MB .mp3,  44 minutes)

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Links for this episode:

  • Episode transcript (pdf) – Thanks, Gertrude!
  • 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 on the failed respiratory syncytial virus vaccine.
  • December 18 was the 100th anniversary of the discovery of poliovirus.

Science podcast pick of the week: Skepticality.
Science book of the week: Science Fictions: A Scientific Mystery, a Massive Cover-up and the Dark Legacy of Robert Gallo by John Crewdson.

Send your virology questions and comments to twiv@microbe.tv

TWiV 11: Elite controllers, mosquitoes, and winter vomiting

Host: Vincent Racaniello

Guests: Alan Dove and Jeremy Luban

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.

Click the arrow above to play, or right-click to download TWiV #11 (62.6 MB .mp3, 68 minutes)

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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 week: The Mr. Science Show
Science book of the week: Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis. Click here to see a page from my Mother’s marked-up copy. She was a high school English teacher.

Send your virology questions to twiv@microbe.tv

TWiV 10: Bats, elephants, and AIDS

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello and Dickson Despommier

Guest: Alan Dove

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.

Click the arrow above to play, or right-click to download TWiV #10 (18.2 MB .mp3, 39 minutes)

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Links for this episode:

Science podcast pick of the week: Futures in Biotech.
Science book of the week: Principles of Molecular Virology, by AJ Cann.

Send your virology questions to twiv@microbe.tv

TWiV 9: Fever! The discovery of Lassa virus

Fever!Hosts: Vincent Racaniello and Dickson Despommier

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.

Click the arrow above to play, or right-click to download TWiV #9 (19 MB .mp3, 41 minutes)

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Links for this episode:

  • Click here to view to cover of ‘Fever!’
  • Buy a used copy of ‘Fever!’ at Amazon.

Science podcast pick of the week: The Naked Scientists (iTunes link).

Send your virology questions to twiv@microbe.tv

The Hosts of TWiV

Vincent Racaniello, Ph.D.


Rich Condit, Ph.D.


Dickson D.
Despommier, Ph.D.


Alan Dove, Ph.D.


Daniel Griffin, M.D.,
Ph.D., CTropMed CTH


Angela Mingarelli, DVM


Jolene Ramsey, Ph.D.


CLICK FOR MORE INFO

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