Jason Ladner writes:

Hi Vincent,

Thanks so much for your fantastic coverage of our manuscript, “A multicomponent animal virus isolated from mosquitoes,” in this week’s episode of TWiV.

I’m writing to provide an explanation to the question of why we decided to do the dose response curve in the first place. The dose-response analysis was actually conducted  expressly to test for a multicomponent organization. We played around with some other ideas using modern technologies, but in the end we felt that this tried and true method was most appropriate.

Of course, this begs the question of why we thought it was worth testing for the nature of segment packaging in the first place. I’d say this is in large part due to my own naiveté. Having only recently started to study viruses when I first assembled this genome, I had very few preconceived notions about how the segments should be packaged. I was also tipped off early on by the lack of segment 5 in 2/6 isolates. Although a multicomponent organization is not required for segment loss, it certainly provides a straightforward mechanism for the establishment of an infection with a subset of genome segments. And then, of course, once the EM data came in, the small particle size was another good clue that the virus could be multicomponent. And to their credit, my PI, Gustavo Palacios, and my colleagues at USAMRIID were very receptive to this idea and helped enormously to properly test the hypothesis.

Jason

P.S. I’m happy to report that we were able to get Figure 3 considerably reduced in size for the final version of the manuscript. That figure definitely didn’t need a full page!  

 

Tarwin writes:

[Long time listener and occasional writer]

Hi Twixers,

Writing from “sunny” San Francisco, the only town in the US that has been in the mid 60s for the past few weeks.

Advertising

I know you have had some backlash against advertising and I’d like to weigh in. It’s always tricky moving from a model that is totally free to one that is either paid, or ad supported.

One thing you may look into is making sure that your advertorial content is separated from the main show itself. Many podcasts do this by adding consistent background music behind these sections.

Another thing that may annoy people is that you are championing your advertisers (Drobo for instance). This may seem to some people like paid for bias. I realise you actually do use and enjoy their products but it can get confusing, especially when others in the group weigh in and it is tricky to tell that you are actually listening to advertising.

The podcast StartUp did a whole show on how they have to walk that fine line and is very worth a listen.

Personally my only problem with advertising is in shows that single interviews. The interview with DA Henderson for example is of historical record in some ways and it is a pity to break it up like that. I’d suggest adding a version to your stream (or just on your site) without the ads – for the future.

Listener Pick

Book: Darwin’s Radio by Greg Bear.

A great sci-fi romp that stars virus researchers and the CDC. Even though it goes further than what is likely in reality it does have some very interesting thoughts on evolution and endogenous retroviruses and the science seems pretty solid in most places.

Thanks again for all the work you all put in.

Regards,

Tarwin

[Programmer etc]

Theo writes:

Hey Twivers,

I think somebody mentioned John Oliver some time ago. He finally touched on vaccines, well, a little bit.

http://youtu.be/0Rnq1NpHdmw

Theo

Frankfurt, Germany

Bohdan writes:

Dear Vincent and TWIVERs,

In TWIV 386 (The Dolphins did it), you asked the question whether modern humans carry unique endogenous retroviruses.

I wonder if that is possible given human behavior and ecology.  It may have been possible when humans lived in closer quarters in Africa with “so called sources” of retroviral agents.  But how would such retroviruses infect humans and not infect our more exposed primate relatives or lower orders first?  Are we also not the ultimate and usually protected predators who no longer intermingle directly with a broad range of species as we once did?

There are, however, currently individuals infected with HTLV-1, HTLV-2, HTLV-3, and HTLV-4.  The last three appear to cause minimal disease.

HTLV-3, and HTLV-4, are African retroviruses.  These appear to be related to their simian counterparts.  They may not yet be endogenous retroviruses.  But they appear to be ‘endemic’ in certain human populations around the world.  Perhaps, some day they will be able to enter the germ-line and thus become endogenous if they provide the host with a specific benefit.

HTLV-2, at least to the sources that I have read, appears to be a New World virus possibly brought to the Americas by migrants from Eurasia millennia ago.  No clear primate relative has been identified according to my limited knowledge and review for this note.  Perhaps, not enough research has been done.  It too is not endogenous.

The same may hold true for HTLV-1 but its presence in Japan in addition to South America, the Caribbean, and Africa links it perhaps to the Portuguese or the Dutch and the slave trade out of Africa.  It too is not endogenous.

It would seem to my research-untrained-mind, that ‘so called non-disease-causing’ retroviruses would have a greater chance of hanging around their host longer and thus of eventually entering the human germ line especially if they provided some advantage to the host.  At the very minimum they should not alert the host’s immune system.

I would appreciate your collective insights.

You have started a great learning resource.  I am using your podcasts to educate myself about the nature of the virosphere and of the human virobiome interactions while I do research on a book about the incubation of HIV-1.

I do have another question.  How would one create a similar resource for doctors, something that would broaden their scientific horizons, help educate them, and enable them to rediscover the joy of taking care of patients?

LPOTW:

I would like to contribute a pick of the week in your honor:

This was also the start of something big: scientific journals back in 1665:

http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/1/1-22.toc  

This website also provides the very first advertisement in the very first issue of a scientific journal:

Advertisements have come a long way since 1665: http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/1/1-22/94.full.pdf+html

You, too, have started something important, free, and nearly instantaneous. [ I hope that Itunes, rss]

Cheers,

Bohdan A Oryshkevich, MD, MPH

Richard writes:

how can an erv acquire functionality such as the placental erv?? it becomes captured by an already successful system, how is its dna expressed when it is a newcomer without molecular friends to enable it? probably a dumb question but i am not a scientist. luv your shows   richard

Robert writes:

When I saw this CNN story I thought: “Why is it necessarily or a good idea to ‘clone’ a virus? (Zika in this case)”:

http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/17/health/zika-virus-clone-scientist/

Maybe the idea is to have a reference virus which is easy to modify, then modifications can be made to the reference and large quantities of virus stock easily generated?

Perhaps it could be a topic of discussion on an upcoming show?

Always enjoy listening to the podcast.

Bob

Bob writes:

I wondered if the fusion peptide is a stable vaccine target, or whether it is subject to mutation eventually making such a vaccine useless.

http://www.niaid.nih.gov/news/newsreleases/2016/Pages/HIV-1-fusion-peptide.aspx

Love your show.

Bob

Bohdan writes:

Dear Vincent and fellow Twivers,|

www.washingtonpost.com/goingoutguide/movies/vaxxed-from-cover-up-to-catastrophe-closer-to-horror-film-than-documentary/2016/05/19/7129aaf4-1c5d-11e6-8c7b-6931e66333e7_story.html

You guys and gals did not do justice to the film Vaxxed.  The Washington Post did.

I also believe that autism is a fascinating medical, social problem, and tragedy for the families involved. It is a very real illness and neuroscience is as fascinating as immunology.  Would it not be possible to hold a TWIV or other TWI … on the real science of autism?  Could we doctors and scientists admit to what we know and do not know about autism for the benefit of the patients and families involved?

You made the mistake of considering this film a documentary.  It appears to fall rather in the terrible ‘horror film-exploitation’ category.  I will never trust your movie reviews again. 🙂

I think that there is a danger in taking ‘crap’ seriously.  It lends it credence.  The movie review approach works better in this case. Even half a star is too much.  There is nothing that is scientific in this film so criticizing it on its ‘scientific’ merits is not productive. You gave this trumpish film more justice than it is worth.

Cheers!!! I love your podcasts.

Bohdan A Oryshkevich, MD, MPH

Deron writes:

One good gender neutral word that can be used to replace “guys” is “folks.” Instead of saying “you guys …” I have trained myself to say “you folks …” when addressing a group of men and women.

I work in the 3D games industry but my hobby is biology, especially cytology and visualization. I listen to twim and twiv regularly and enjoy them immensely. You FOLKS are doing a great work for the world in teaching us about the marvels of the unseen world.

Nathan writes:

Dr. Racaniello and TWIV team,

Very interesting episode (390). With the increase in arbovirus emergence, we are in desperate need for more efficient methods to catch mosquitoes. The trap that Ethan and Jonathan described obviously sounds really awesome, and could help advance the field, but there seems to be a disconnect between the trap and using mosquitoes for non-vector-borne pathogen surveillance. Specifically, detecting viruses left of boom (with the boom being an outbreak). As briefly mentioned, CO2 traps typically do not catch bloodfed mosquitoes. Catching mosquitoes that had fed and are resting is more ideal – but for many species this is a difficult task. A group that I work with at Colorado State University are using Anopheles gambiae for a similar purpose (see link below). Our approach works very well for a few reasons. An. gambiae feed indoors on humans, then rest on the inside walls of houses for 1-2 days while digesting. We then use giant vacuums to suck them off the walls then squish the contents of their abdomens onto FTA cards to preserve the DNA/RNA for sequencing. We validated our approach in the lab and we are currently using this protocol to look for human viruses in Liberia and Burkina Faso. So far we can say that a lot of people have herpesviruses and a dog had canine distemper virus. Thought that you all would be interested since Ethan and Jonathan did not mention our study.

http://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journal.pntd.0003628  

Cheers,

Nathan

********************

Nathan D. Grubaugh, Ph.D., M.S.  

SoGES Leadership Fellow

Ebel Lab  

Arthropod-borne and Infectious Diseases Laboratory  

Dept. of Microbiology, Immunology, and Pathology  

Colorado State University

 

 

Anthony writes:

Perhaps TWiV can enjoy a day trip, too.  I wonder if Influenza is a concern for the sea mammals at the Coney Island Aquarium?

http://tinyurl.com/hajfcm4

Great TWiP episode.

Kevin writes:

Hi Kathy,

Ask and ye shall receive (link to wikipedia article).

Cheers!

Todd writes:

Dear Vincent,

No need to read this email on the show, as I don’t want to take up the team’s or your listeners’ time. Thank you for reading my note regarding pre-print publications. I just wanted to apologize if you felt that my email was targeting your blog post that brought this whole issue up in the first place. My comments were meant more generally.

As a blogger myself, I tend to do keyword hyperlinking, as Alan suggested, though if I’m discussing a particular paper, I will try to include the title, authors, and journal so readers can find the paper in case the link breaks sometime down the line. I haven’t encountered the pre-print publication dilemma myself, yet.

Thanks again for all you and the rest of the TWiV team do!

Best,

Todd W.

www.harpocratesspeaks.com

P.S. Two rules of the internet:

1) You are wrong.

2) If you are right, please see rule #1.

Scott writes:

Dear gents:

A friend shared your weblink to me, and I have to say I really enjoyed the banter!

Anyway, I am part of a team that is obsessed with “build a better mozzie trap”, and found the discussion of the new “drone” traps fascinating.  For the sake of your virological interest, we have been beating down the bottlenecks on a trap system to detect arbovirus activity in Australia for a few years now.  

  1.  Basically, we use honey soaked FTA cards (nucleic acid preserv. Cards) that mosquitoes feed on and expectorate any viruses.  (see PNAS ms).  This eliminated the need to pool massive numbers of mosquitoes.
  2.  We developed passive traps that act like minnow traps for skeeters – the beasts follow the CO2 plume up through a funnel into a crate from which they can never escape!  This eliminated the need for motors, fans and batteries that people like to steal.  The FTA cards are housed in the crate.   
  3.  We have tried to make the trap a mozzie hotel (providing bed and water) so we can keep them alive and get repeat feedings, all the better to detect virus.  We term this system the SMACK (pun intended): sentinel mosquito arbovirus capture kit (see attached ms).

The system certainly captures mosquitoes, and could be a replacement for sentinel animals.  Attached is a pic of 80,000 mozzies we caught  near Darwin just for fun.

One big question:  we are often at the limits of detection (Ct scores in upper 30s) using Taqman.  Anything more sensitive in the pipeline?

Cheers, and hope to hear from you.

Scott

Prof. Scott A. Ritchie

NHMRC Research Fellow

College of Public Health, Medical and Veterinary Sciences

Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine

James Cook University

Cairns Queensland 4870

Australia

He sent:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8dwAT4VdQdjcXJxZ3JtOVU1eXZDbHdQSHIwRlFyYnI3VW40/view?usp=sharing

 

Tom writes: [re Microsoft mosquito device]

I’m not sure I understand their device but…

Re: Microsoft project to gather blood samples from mosquitoes etc. with their device…

If their device is stationed in my neighborhood in Miami or Mobile, Alabama, they gather a bit of my blood… then they have information about my blood, the viruses in my system, my genetic diseases etc.?

Are there privacy problems here? Can people enter their names on the Do Not Gather My Blood Sample Registry? What if residents in some neighborhood in Miami do not want their blood samples gathered?

— Tom

Bob writes:

The BBC correspondent, Malcolm Brabant, attributes his descent into madness to a “routine” yellow-fever vaccination.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/11439622/How-a-jab-plunged-my-life-into-madness.html

I myself (along with my entire family) was given this vaccination as part of a job requirement, working in Saudi Arabia.

Bob

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