MicrobeWorld

A serological test is highly accurate at finding tuberculosis infection in elephants, and can determine such infection years before culture, according to a study in the August Clinical and Vaccine Immunology (click source to download the .pdf of the journal article). The issue is critical not on... Read More

Prostate cancer is the leading cause of cancer morbidity and the third greatest cause of cancer death among men in developed countries. A major question in cancer research has been whether virus infection plays a role in cancers of the genitourinary tract. Now a team of Swiss investigators has n... Read More

Efforts to expunge micro-organisms from spacecraft assembly cleanrooms, and the spacecraft themselves, inadvertently select for the organisms that are often the most fit to survive long journeys in space. This has the risk of thwarting the goal of avoiding contaminating other celestial bodies, a... Read More

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello and Dickson Despommier

Vincent and Dickson review how sickle cel... Read More

Robin writes:

http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definitions/Trematoda

Trematodes are commonly referred to as flukes. This term can be traced back to the Saxon name f... Read More

When I am asked to name the most lethal human virus, I never hesitate to name rabies virus. Infection with this virus is almost invariably fatal; just three unvaccinated individuals have been known to survive. New evidence from humans in the Peruvian Amazon suggests that the virus might be less ... Read More

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Alan Dove, ... Read More

Dallas writes:

I am going through the old podcasts, when I have time. Number forty one covered ISA — a salmonid virus with a billion dollar class damages history. When someone mentioned vaccines development, a comments was made about how can you vaccinate salmon.

... Read More

This episode: Using a bacterial trick to protect pathogen proteins from radiation could help produce useful vaccines!

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The impact of influenza on work absenteeism is poorly documented. Researchers used data from the national registry and Norway Post AS (>14,000 employees) to explore sickness absence patterns from 2005/06 through 2009/10 in Norway. Annually, an estimated 2.868% (mean 95% confidence interval (CI):... Read More

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Read More

If you know anything about snakes you might be familiar with snake inclusion body disease, or IBD. This transmissible and fatal disease affects snakes of a variety of species but has been best studied in boas. The name comes from the presence of large masses (inclusions) in the cytoplasm of cell... Read More

Jamie Henzy, a postdoctoral researcher at Boston College, has authored a post on Small Things Considered that explores the shady world of the deltaretrovirus genus.

"Among retroviruses, the deltaretrovirus genus is something of a shady bunch, its members lurking in the shadows, causing troubl... Read More

[we began be re-reading part of Deena's email from TWiV 193]

Ben writes:

Hello TWIV Crew,

I must first ap... Read More

Jesse writes:

Dear Doctor's Racaniello and Despommier,

Huzzah! I have tracked down Dick's missing book on tropical medicine, or at least another copy of said book. While listening to TWIP #40, my ears perked up when Dick said he had lent a book to a student only to h... Read More

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello and Dickson Despommier

Vincent and Dickson answer listener email... Read More

When I drafted my article for TakePart (Don’t Panic – Ebola Isn’t Heading For You), I used the term ‘ebolavirus’ throughout, but the editors changed every instance to ‘Ebola virus’. Understanding which term is correct is far more complicated than you might imagine. Read More

An outbreak of Ebola hemorrhagic fever that began in early July 2012 has involved at least 36 individuals and 16 deaths. So far the disease has been confined to a rural region west of Kampala, the capital of Uganda. The subject of Richard Preston’s scary The Hot Zone, Ebola virus is newsworthy b... Read More

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Matthew Daugherty, Jondavid deJong, Hel... Read More

This episode: Scientists engineer mosquito gut bacteria to fight malaria!

... Read More