Jason writes:
Greetings VRADK,
I’ll leave it to you to figure out the greeting.. 🙂
I’m a bit behind on TWIV, but I just listened to episode 411 and heard about the final book contest. I realize you’ve likely picked a winner by now, but couldn’t help but submit this for your enjoyment. I have a feeling Alan will enjoy it.
There once was a virus name Vincent
Who appeared to all as innocent
But as it turned out
As it floated about
It mutated into something magnificent
I iterated a few times on this, and waffled between using maleficent and magnificent.. The former sounded interesting, but the latter seems more appropriate for TWIV.
I’ve been listening since the first Drobo contest, and despite not being in the scientific field, I find your podcast quite informative. TWIV holds a place within the list of other podcasts I listen to on the 3 hour commute (each way!) I take twice a week to head into the office. I thought it might be interesting to list some of the other podcasts I listen to as well.
TWIV
Nerdist
Penn’s Sunday School (starring Penn Jillette of Penn and Teller fame)
Smodcast (starring Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier of Clerks fame)
Defensive Security
On the Media
Note To Self
And, when there are new episodes, We’re Alive, which is a radio play
Definitely varied, but it keeps the queue full and I’m never wanting for something to listen to.
Keep up the great podcast. It’s wonderful to see you expand your viral empire and bring new podcasts into the fold. Science communication is essential and I find the information I learn on TWIV to be useful in many ways.
Thanks!
Saranga writes:
Dear TWiV Professors,
Greetings from Sri Lanka! I am a medical virologist from this beautiful island nation with an eternal summer, who has been following your vibrant podcast for the last 5 years. I am writing you this email to express my gratitude for your service rendered in science education, especially in virology.
Yours podcasts have been my inspiration during my commute to work through the ever growing and ever slowing, sluggish traffic in Colombo, which makes the waiting in traffic an enjoyable one. Virology either as an applied or a basic subject is not well developed in this part of the world where we have only a handful of people with some expertise. Certainly there are exceptional and brilliant people such as Prof. J.S.M.Peiris FRS, who is a Sri Lankan with an immense contribution to the field of medical virology, but generally the rest of us need to work to have a constant motivation to improve our knowledge in virology. I find TWiV as one of those motivational factors in my virologist career and I believe a few of my colleagues do feel the same after introducing them to your podcast. Your podcasts orient the listener in the direction of new developments as well as in the breadth of the field of virology as a scientific, artistic and a cultural subject.
Let me tell you a bit about our work in virology in Sri Lanka. We are a group of medics who are involved in the diagnosis and management of infections in Sri Lanka. The field of medical microbiology has been in the country for the last few decades but our subgroup emerged recently within the last decade. Sri Lanka in fact is one of the few countries that has the separate field of medical virology as a medical postgraduate subject, among other countries such as UK. Currently our tasks span from laboratory work (job of a clinical scientist and a pathologist) to clinical work (the job of an ID physician). As we are a middle-income country with a totally government-funded universal healthcare system (we do have small and growing private sector), the field of virology is at a lower level of development when compared with the developed world. We are gradually trying to expand the services, which are hampered by the limitations of resources, but we are slowly improving.
The landscape of viral infections in this country is vastly unknown, especially with reference to arboviruses and other zoonoses. For most of the viral illnesses, there are limitations in diagnosis as a nation, except for the common ones such as blood-borne viruses (e.g. HIV), common arboviruses (e.g. Dengue) and common zoonoses (e.g. Rabies). On the other hand, in clinical practice we do have limitations in available therapeutics for viral illnesses, and sometimes we have to adapt to survive with limited resources (a good example is the rabies vaccination in post-exposure prophylaxis, where we follow vaccination via the intradermal route instead of the intramuscular route, as a cost-cutting but effective measure). I believe practicing clinical virology or even scientific research (basic/applied) is a different form of art in the developing world. Among your diverse podcasts of TWiV, you have discussions with many groups of personnel such as medical personnel, international groups etc. I would like to propose you to do some podcasts about virology/microbiology in the resource-poor settings too, if is feasible.
It is my privilege and pleasure writing to you. Looking forward to listen to many many more TWiX podcasts.
Live long and prosper!
Saranga Sumathipala M.D.
p.s. The current weather in Sri Lanka has turned into a moist and wet one from a sunny and dry one due to the recent activation of the Northeast monsoon and the temperature now in Colombo is 310C with a cloudy sky.
Gopal writes:
Hello Vincent,
I seem to recall that you have occasionally mentioned on TWiV, in a mildly disapproving tone, that your kids might pick up some microbes from their dog. So when I came across this paper in an Elsevier media alert, I thought I should bring it to your notice.
Companion Animals as a Source of Viruses for Human Beings and Food Production Animals
L.A. Reperant et al.
Journal of Comparative Pathology (2016)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0021997516300962
The paper, I am glad to say, is open access.
Cheers,
Gopal
Wink writes:
Maybe this is the first highly successful gene therapy? It is for X-linked severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID), commonly known as “bubble boy disease.” Lymphocytes from children with SCID are transfected ex-vivo with a gammaretrovirus containing the human adenosine deaminase gene, which is lacking in SCID. The therapy was approved in Europe under the name Strimvelis. While SCID is uniformly fatal, usually in the first year of life, 15 of 18 subjects were apparently cured.
Wink Weinberg
Atlanta
Phil writes:
Hello Vincent
Are bacteriophages not classified by the Baltimore system? According to Wiki there are 19 types of phage which they list.
I follow all your podcasts and have started to do your online virology course. Thanks so much to you and your teams for all your hard work and dedication. I live in Milton Keynes, England.
Thanks again
Robert writes:
Listening to your discussion in TWiV 404 about archiving and data formats recalled this mind-boggling story I saw recently:
===
“A new report from scientists Mark Ziemann, Yotam Eren, and Assam El-Osta says that 20% of scientific papers on genes contain gene name conversion errors caused by Excel. In the scientific article, titled “Gene name errors are widespread in the scientific literature,” article’s abstract section, the scientists explain: “The spreadsheet software Microsoft Excel, when used with default settings, is known to convert gene names to dates and floating-point numbers. A programmatic scan of leading genomics journals reveals that approximately one-fifth of papers with supplementary Excel gene lists contain erroneous gene name conversions.”
It’s easy to see why Excel might have problems with certain gene names when you see the “gene symbols” that the scientists use as examples: “For example, gene symbols such as SEPT2 (Septin 2) and MARCH1 [Membrane-Associated Ring Finger (C3HC4) 1, E3 Ubiquitin Protein Ligase] are converted by default to ‘2-Sep’ and ‘1-Mar’, respectively. Furthermore, RIKEN identifiers were described to be automatically converted to floating point numbers (i.e. from accession ‘2310009E13’ to ‘2.31E+13’). Since that report, we have uncovered further instances where gene symbols were converted to dates in supplementary data of recently published papers (e.g. ‘SEPT2’ converted to ‘2006/09/02’). This suggests that gene name errors continue to be a problem in supplementary files accompanying articles. Inadvertent gene symbol conversion is problematic because these supplementary files are an important resource in the genomics community that are frequently reused. Our aim here is to raise awareness of the problem.””
===
http://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13059-016-1044-7
Always enjoy your shows, tho I think the concentration on the weather is useless froth and makes me very impatient.
Bob
Anthony writes:
Was this study ever done? I only came across the original story recently. I wasn’t able to find a followup.
MERS does not have the haze of the Apocalypse that shrouds Zika or Ebola. Even so, anything involving the Middle East in general and the KSA in particular is very, very important. Perhaps there can be continued coverage on TWiV?
Thank you.
Anthony Olszewski
# # #
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-27538712
Jubal writes:
It looks kind of like a Muppet Monster
JP in Hawaii
p.s. Now that you’ve got a travel budget come out to Hawaii. October is cheap and off season. I’ll take you all sailing and snorkeling. The food is delicious too.
Suellen writes:
I hope you are going to review this paper:
| [29 Aug 2016 article] |
I’m reading it myself, but I’m NOT a virologist (I’m an Oracle Database Administrator). This looks very promising, and since you have not only virologists, but a parasitologist your team, I would love to hear your opinion on it.
Mark writes:
Hello Vincent and crew,
I’m guessing that you may receive commentary about the following CFS paper, and I’m almost 100% sure that it has been across Vincent’s desk already, but I’d like to draw your attention to the following paper:
Metabolic features of chronic fatigue syndrome
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/08/24/1607571113.long
Metabolomics? What does that have to do with Virology? Well I think that it has a lot to do with Virology. From the paper: “CFS is an evolutionarily conserved, genetically regulated, hypometabolic state similar to dauer that permits survival and persistence under conditions of environmental stress but at the cost of severely curtailed function and quality of life.”
Environmental stress, such as a persistent, ongoing infection perhaps?
I just think this paper is amazing for so many reasons, but from a Virology standpoint, these researchers have identified a human immune mechanism for putting on the metabolic hand-brake to hinder an infectious agent. Absolutely astounding.
I really look forward to hearing you talk about this paper, and for when you do, I have some conversation points:
- Does this fit into the category of innate or adaptive immunity?
- Could the different metabolic pathways affected between men and women reflect the different biology of women, who carry a fetus, and may require a more protective/less damaging set of metabolic pathways to be regulated?
- Could this be a genetically conserved defense mechanism which is conserved across more mammalian species?
- Could there be a mouse or primate model for inducing this metabolic state?
Vincent, I want to also personally thank you for your assistance in the efforts of the PACE trial. We patients are very grateful to you, and the others with you who have put effort into bringing the trial into the spotlight. Thank you.
Best regards,
Mark
Sam writes:
Dear Commensal TWIVome,
My name is Sam and I am a 4th year undergraduate student at the University of Toronto studying molecular genetics.
I recently listened to TWIV 331 on Enterovirus D68. I was wondering: since EV-D68 is a picornavirus, would it be possible to make a Salk-style formalin-inactivated vaccine like IPV or the HCV vaccine? To find out whether such a vaccine is in development, I googled “Enterovirus D68 Vaccine.” I was disappointed, but not surprised to see the first hit “As Enterovirus D68 Deaths Increase, Are Vaccine Contaminants to Blame?” https://healthimpactnews.com/2014/as-enterovirus-d-68-deaths-increase-are-vaccine-contaminants-to-blame/
Given that my query returned only anti-vaxxer nonsense, do any of you TWIVologists know of such EV-D68 vaccine candidates?
Thank you for all your great TWIX podcast for all my hours of counting multi-vulva worms (C. elegans) at my
microscope.
The weather here in Toronto, ON is 26C/79F/299K, mostly cloudy, with 47% humidity, 1016mb pressure, visibility 15 km.
Cordially,
Sam
Liona writes:
Hello TWI team,
Perhaps this has been mentioned before, but if not, I want to bring your attention to the evolution (or devolution) of the English language that has led to the dilemma caused by the lack of a gender neutral second person plural pronoun in English. In fact, during Shakespeare’s day, thou was the second person singular pronoun, while the plural pronoun was you! (here is a page on this) French uses the second person plural as a formal way to address a (single) person and likely this is how you came to be used in this way in English. Both German and French make a distinction between singular and plural and, unlike English, maintain this distinction to this day (du and Ihr in German, and tu and vous in French).
I would prefer returning to Shakespearean English (re-replacing you, your, yourself, and yours with the more precise thou, thee, thy, thyself, thine, ye, you, your, yourself, and yours).
Until then, I am in favor of y’all.
Thank y’all for all your work
Best,
Liona
Lissa writes:
Great image in NPR story.
“Human viruses are like a fine chocolate truffle: It takes only one to get the full experience.”
The story goes on to discuss the Guaico Culex virus where “the mosquito needs to catch several of the pieces to get an infection.” They go on and quote Vincent Racaniello – my favorite virologist. “And with viruses, really anything is possible. “We should always expect the unexpected,” he says.” Thought a little chocolate is always a good thing to think about 9-}
Lissa
Lee writes:
My friend, Siddarth Krishnamurthy, works in virology at Washington University, St. Louis, where he has recently discovered over 100 RNA bacteriophages. I thought that this dovetailed neatly with your last piece on the expansion of DNA viruses, and I hope that you find his research worth talking about in your next episode..
I don’t know much about virology, but I do know from my work in healthcare that bacterial infections suck. Between systemic infection, chronic wound care, and the deleterious effects of broad spectrum antibiotics, bacteria represent one of the worst adverse events of hospitalization. Even simple procedures run the risk of infection. Antibacterial treatment is costly, may have side effects and allergic reactions, and – as MRSA and now gonorrhea are demonstrating – are showing limits to their effectiveness.
The prospect of being able to use this fresh and expansive palette of bacteriophages to administer a highly specific, highly effective solution to infection, that can be administered prophylactically or therapeutically, would revolutionize hospital healthcare. Imagine a world in which the worst risk in surgery was addiction to Norco, and the hardest part of an antibiotic regimen was a single injection.
I am sure there are other positive applications, but my imagination is too limited to imagine them. I can, however, imagine a situation like in the movie I Am Legend, in which an errant virus, engineered to seek out and destroy pathogenic tissues, is turned into the vector for a worldwide vampire zombie epidemic, leaving only Will Smith and his faithful German Shepherd to survive and question the very pressing question of continued existence. The more practical ethical dilemmas of viral therapeutics is obviously more involved and intellectually stimulating, but the child in me is desperate to get my post-apocalyptic Walking Dead scenarios on.
I hope that this piques your interest. Thank you for your time and consideration!
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature20167.html
Jon writes:
Dear Twivsters,
Last week you mentioned expense in response to my question about whether it would be better to take both flumist AND the flu shot.
However, given the lousy efficacy of the shot and the mist, then having both might actually save money, if you count
1) work hours lost from flu
2) medical expenses
3) herd immunity
4) costs from old people dying of the flu
then having both might indeed be cheaper.
Sincerely,
Jon
Stephen writes:
Hello to the Fellowship of the Virus!
Greetings from Pittsburgh, PA where it is currently partly cloudy and 25°C with a dew point of 19°C. (That’s 67% humidity for those who are wondering.)
In regard to your discussion of varicella zoster virus vaccines in TWiV 403 (I think): I am no expert, but I can confirm that the Merck’s shingles vaccine (Zostavax) does contain a higher virus titer than the chicken pox vaccine (Varivax) with very few other differences. Monographs for the two products are linked below.
Varivax: http://www.merck.ca/assets/en/pdf/products/VARIVAX_III-PM_E.pdf – Top of page 3
Zostavax: http://www.merck.ca/assets/en/pdf/products/ZOSTAVAX_II-PM_E.pdf – Top of page 3
I have also seen the effects of the varicella vaccine wear off about 7 years after administration. My younger brother was one of the patients who got the vaccine in early 1994, not long after its launch. At the time, there was no recommendation for a booster. However, seven years later, he got a very mild case of the chicken pox the day before Thanksgiving. Thankfully, the case resolved within a few days. I, however, was the monster when it came to varicella: I returned home from a routine visit to the pediatrician at 18 months old, carrying the virus with me, and then proceeded to give it to my five month old sister AND my father. They will never let me live that down.
I find your podcasts to be light, witty, and insightful about the world of viruses. I wanted to say thank you for helping me through a difficult transition in my life. I have recently moved to Pittsburgh to start my PhD in Molecular Biophysics and Structural Biology at the University of Pittsburgh. In order to do so, I left my job at Merck’s Maurice R. Hilleman Center for Vaccine Manufacturing (where I worked with both MMR and Varicella Zoster vaccines) and my long-time home. Your weekly doses of knowledge interlaced with humor have helped make this difficult transition easier. I now look forward to your weekly doses of humor and knowledge and to what I can learn on this journey I have just started.
Thank you again for all you do,
Stephen
P.S. I started listening around TWiV 390, so I have a lot of catching up to do!
———
Stephen E. White
Graduate Student
Molecular Biophysics and Structrual Biology
University of Pittsburgh