John Mascola joins TWiV to discuss the history and mission of the NIH Vaccine Research Center, how it prepared for devising pandemic vaccines, and development of the COVID-19 vaccines.
Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Alan Dove, Rich Condit, and Brianne Barker
Guest: John Mascola
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Download TWiV 858 (130 MB .mp3, 109 min)
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Links for this episode
- Accelerated COVID-19 vaccine development (Immunity) 20:27
- Letters read on TWiV 858 1:03:24
- Timestamps by Jolene. Thanks!
Weekly Picks 1:33:57
Brianne – How Sesame Street is Handling the Pandemic
Rich – Zamboni: How it works
Alan – How lightning starts
Vincent – Buon-A-Petitti
Listener Picks
Meika –Wordle
Intro music is by Ronald Jenkees
Send your virology questions and comments to [email protected]
In Damien’s letter, the TWiT episode was talking about J. Craig Venter’s JCVI-syn3.0 synthetic bacteria line, which was reported in March 2016 in Science: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aad6253
Back in 2016 J. Craig Venter’s group was credited with creating a synthetic cell “that contains the smallest genome of any known, independent organism.” -https://www.nature.com/articles/531557a
If you read a little further in the nature article you will see that it says “Eventually, the team hit on the 531,000-base, 473-gene design that became known as JCVI-syn3.0 (syn2.0 was a less streamlined intermediary). Syn3.0 has a respectable doubling time of 3 hours, compared with, for instance, 1 hour for M. mycoides and 18 hours for M. genitalium.”
I tried Wordle and found it was almost exactly like a flash game I used to play called WordSpector. WordSpector had many variations within the game, and lasted for hours! I am hoping to find it again.
I have to say that is was funny in a good way to watch this, and see Alan, Vincent, Rich and Brianne nodding in agreement simultaneously with Dr Mascola. Thanks for one of the better recent TWiV episodes.