Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Alan Dove, and Rich Condit
Vincent, Alan, and Rich are enthralled by movies of vaccinia virus plaque formation, then consider how repulsion of superinfection virions leads to rapid virus spread, and a therapeutic prostate cancer vaccine.
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Click the arrow above to play, or right-click to download TWiV #68 (58 MB .mp3, 80 minutes)
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Links for this episode:
- Rapid virus spread by repulsion of superinfection virions
- Movie of vaccinia virus plaque formation (download .mov)
- Movie of GFP-vaccinia virus plaque formation (download .mov)
- More amazing vaccinia virus movies
- Prostate cancer vaccine (Reuters article, original research)
Weekly Science Picks
Rich Foundations of Virology – PowerPoint by Frederick A. Murphy (bio/interview pdf)
Alan Spoonful of Medicine – Nature Medicine blog
Vincent The Feynman Lectures (thanks Ilya!)
Send your virology questions and comments to [email protected].
What amazing videos! I listened to the podcast in the car and had to get home so I could see the videos you were talking about. I can see what all the excitement was for. Totally awesome science!! I plaque viruses all the time and have always wanted to make this movie. Lets do all types of viruses now with this. Are they all the same? Does it differ in different cell types? I want more data!!
Virus adsorption and plaque formation by poliomyelitis, herpes-B, and vaccinia viruses have been studied in monolayer cultures of monkey kidney. Under the conditions employed, it was found that the time required for adsorption of 50% of the plaque-forming units was approximately 30 minutes for herpes-B virus and between 1 and 2 hours for poliomyelitis and vaccinia viruses.
Wasn’t the first plaque assay published by Dulbecco in 1952 using WEEV, not poliovirus? I think that the impact of WEEV in virology during the 1930’s and 1940’s is underestimated in general.
Apologies if this was corrected in a future TWiV.