TWiV 96: Making viral DNA

August 22, 2010

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Dickson Despommier, and Rich Condit

Vincent, Dickson, and Rich continue Virology 101 with a discussion of how viruses with DNA genomes replicate their genetic information.



Click the arrow above to play, or right-click to download TWiV #96 (65 MB .mp3, 90 minutes)

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Weekly Science Picks

Rich – Breast milk sugars give infants a protective coat (NY Times and PNAS article)
Vincent – The Great American University by Jonathan R. Cole

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9 comments on “TWiV 96: Making viral DNA

  1. Retrovirus Aug 30, 2010

    Thought this virus cartoon was cute

    http://i.imgur.com/gHElA.jpg

  2. Anonymous Sep 3, 2010

    You haven’t forgotten about the video, right?

    • Haven’t forgotten the video of TWiV 96 – hope to get it up this week.

      • Anonymous Sep 8, 2010

        Thanks. I forget how long good editing takes…
        I have delayed listening to the podcast because it sounded like the video would really help clarify what you and the others were saying.

  3. skiquik Sep 21, 2013

    I’m listening to this podcast because I’m taking Dr. Racaniello’s Virology 1 class on Coursera. We just finished the lectures on DNA synthesis and I wanted a review source for the material. I have a comment about the slide showing the DNA structure with the structure of ribose in the upper right hand corner. Shouldn’t the structure be 3′ deoxyribose instead? In this discussion Dr. V. says that the backbone sugar is ribose (11:55). In the big scale of things it’s probably not that important but since a lot of listeners may not be familiar with the biochemistry of DNA It’s important.

    For anyone interested in why DNA contains 3’deoxyribose and not 2’deoxyribose here’s a reference that provides an answer to this question:

    R. Breslin and T. Sheppard, Pure & Appl. Chem., 68(11): 2027-2041, 1996.

    The authors provide data to show that although the base pairing relationships are the same between 3′ & 2′ deoxyribose containing duplexes, the 2′ form is less stable under physiological conditions.

    Dickson asked why the denatured DNA molecules reanneal following melting. This occurs because the molecule seeks the lowest possible energy state which is the correctly paired structure.

    Thanks for doing the podcasts. They are great,

  4. Philipp Mar 24, 2020

    Hi, I noticed this video and the one in TWiV 66 (reverse transcription) are both cut short to around 9 minutes. Having listened to the audio version first I know the recordings are much longer than that. Is that intentional or has there been an issue with the upload?

    In any case, thanks for the podcast. I used to listen to TWiV regularly around 2010 and now came back ten years later to find a staggering number of almost 600 episodes. You guys are fantastic!