Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Alan Dove, Rich Condit, Dickson Despommier, Kathy Spindler, Mark Stenglein, and Joseph DeRisi
The TWiVites meet with Mark Stenglein and Joseph DeRisi to discuss their discovery of a novel arenavirus in snakes with inclusion body disease.
Click the arrow above to play, or right-click to download TWiV 196 (77 MB .mp3, 107 minutes).
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Links for this episode:
- Highly divergent arenaviruses in snakes (mBio)
- Taryn’s sick snake (NPR)
- Assemblathon
- Faculty position in virology, Columbia U.
- Petridish.org
- TWiV on Facebook
- Letters read on TWiV 196
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Send your virology questions and comments to twiv@microbe.tv.
This is where things get interesting…is the mouse involved, either giving or receiving the virus? This type of research raises very important questions. I wish we as a funding society and country jumped on board to understand viruses at the basic level. This TWiV episode and the previous one looking at a RNA-DNA virus reinforces my belief that we need to invest funding in basic virology…image for just 4-5 million (40-50 labs at $100,000), a drop in the bucket for a major funding agency, we fund these smaller labs. Not so much as stable multi-year funding grants but at the very least give them at least a window to pursue those virus questions that would be “cool” and may lead to downstream applications.
Josh