Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Rich Condit, Dickson Despommier, Alan Dove, and Kathy Spindler
The complete TWiV team discusses the amazing finding that cyclic GMP-AMP synthase is a cytosolic innate immune DNA sensor.
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Download TWiV 222 (70 MB .mp3, 97 min)
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Links for this episode:
- Zhijian J. Chen (Wikipedia)
- Sensing the dark side of DNA (Science)
- cGAMP is an endogenous second messenger (Science)
- cGAMP synthase is a DNA sensor (Science)
- Pore-forming toxin (Wikipedia)
- Letters read on TWiV 222
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Thanks for a great discussion of two fantastic papers. I want to comment on a couple of points.
Firstly, in response to a listener question about whether there are viruses that infect mitochondria or chloroplasts, maybe this doesn’t count, but there is a family of plant viroids (infectious agents that have a small circular RNA genome, but no protein) that replicate in the chloroplasts. They are the Avsunviroidae (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avsunviroidae).
Secondly, here is a link to a Ben Goldacre TED talk where he explains why the All Trials campaign is necessary.
http://www.ted.com/talks/ben_goldacre_what_doctors_don_t_know_about_the_drugs_they_prescribe.html