Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Alan Dove, Matt Frieman, and Kathy Spindler
Vincent, Alan, Matt, and Kathy review the use of silk to stabilize antibiotics and a viral vaccine, and an impaired-fidelity vaccine against SARS coronavirus.
Click arrow to play | Download TWiV 207 (76 MB .mp3, 106 min)
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Links for this episode:
- Silk stabilization of antibiotics and vaccines (PNAS)
- Impaired-fidelity coronavirus vaccine (Nature Medicine)
- Select agent status and SARS therapies (Spoonful of Medicine)
- Letters read on TWiV 207
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Kathy – The glass transition
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Send your virology questions and comments (email or mp3 file) to twiv@microbe.tv
I was thinking of Dr. Racaniello dealing with his flooded house while watching this BBC film about the storm and the effect of social media, “Superstorm Sandy: Caught on Camera”, http://www.hulu.com/watch/427229
Vincent,
A new twist is using spider silk and its long polymer chains by incorporating the amino acids Arg-Gly-Asp (RGD) within the protein, RGD enables stem cells to “latch on” using integrin receptors..in theory (and ultimate goal) is to create stem cells that elongate without differentiating so that one day spinal cord victims can be implanted with their own cells and “bridge” the break enabling repair.
Spider silk link:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22727466
One of many virus engineered RGD motifs engineered for multi-valent display to interact with stem cells (yes plugging one of my papers 🙂
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22522012
RGD within M13 virus particle, by Dr. Seung-Wuk Lee from Berkeley, considered the pioneer guy in the field.
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/la100226u
While I’ve moved on to influenza for my postdoc I have a soft spot in my heart for exploiting viruses and proteins for new uses (virus batteries, nanowires, etc.)
Hope the house is dried out and listened with enthusiasm about the spider-silk story while on my Sunday run.
Josh Powell
Maybe the authors of the silk stabilization paper didn’t do plaque assays of the MMR vaccine because they had three different viruses in the assay? RT-qPCR would be easier to multiplex in this case I would have thought.
Very interesting program, would be nice if discussion is focused on the topic.