MicrobeWorld

The World Health Organization has decided not to recommend destruction of the remaining stocks of smallpox virus. This debate has been ongoing since 1980, when the disease was declared eradicated. WHO has indicated that no new experiments on smallpox virus will be permitted, only conclusion of o... Read More

Casey writes:

Professors,

I would like to thank you for the excellent podcasts regarding parasites and viruses. Although I must say, I think TWiP is more enjoyable than TWiV. I graduated with a bachelor's degree in Microbiology and a bachelor's degree in Clinical L... Read More

Bryce writes:

I enjoyed your discussion of the Molecular Therapy paper in this week’s TWiV. My lab (and others) have worked on using virus particles as scaffolds to increase the immunogenicity of various targets for quite some time. One thing that wanted to point out ... Read More

When my laboratory discovered the cell receptor for poliovirus in 1989, many new research directions were suddenly revealed – such as creating a mouse model for poliomyelitis. One application we did not think of was to use the receptor to screen samples of drinking water for the presence of viru... Read More

This episode: Some bacteria have been discovered that construct multiple types of magnet in their cells!

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Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Alan Dove, Rich Condit, and Read More

When infection with hepatitis C virus goes from acute to chronic, severe liver disease may occur which requires organ transplantation. Nearly 200 million people are chronically infected with HCV, necessitating approaches to preventing and treating infections. No HCV vaccine is available, and cur... Read More

Carlos writes:

Dear Vincent Racaniello and Dickson Despommier

I am an avid listener of TWIP since its start, have been following TWIV for at least two years and, surprise, also follow TWIM.

My field is Computer Science, but I crave for... Read More

The protein components of the plaques and tangles seen in the Alzheimer's disease brain offer a clue to the origins of the disease: It turns out that they are heavily enriched in human proteins used by herpes simplex during its life cycle: Many immune system related proteins are also found in th... Read More

Peter writes:

Dear TWiM Team

A fascinating article from New Scientist this week.

Standard medical teaching is that the foetus is sterile and that the microbiome only begins to develop post natal.

New research from Spain indicates that the microbiome s... Read More

Norm writes:

First, I love your podcasts.

You guys are constantly grousing about the lack of research funding.

I was curious.

NIH, funding has risen every year since 2000, from $17B to the current $31B (supports 325,000 researchers)

NSF... Read More

Ebrahim writes:

Dear Dr. Racaniello

I was watching the conference in Dublin and I wanted to thank you for sharing my e-mail with the people in the panel, since I saw how nice it was for me to reach the specialists with that ease through TWIV.<... Read More

The finding of viral nucleic acid sequences in illegally imported wildlife products has attracted the attention of the New York Times, which published an article entitled From the jungle to J.F.K., viruses cross borders in monkey meat. Read More

The American Society for Microbiology Committee on K-12 Education publishes peer-reviewed resources that convey important scientific concepts from the microbial world, such as microbial processes, methods used to study microorganisms and other general science topics. The activities are student-c... Read More

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello,  Read More

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Rich Condit, and Read More

Luke writes:

Hello TWiV hosts,

I'm currently working as a technician in the biochemistry and molecular biophysics department at Columbia, having just received my BA from here in the Spring. First of all, I'd like to join the chorus of praises ... Read More

John writes:

Re the letter you got about a Spanish version of TWIV: ASM already has a nice Spanish microbiology podcast, called Mundos de los Microbios. Your TWIM co-host Elio has been on that podcast at least once that I’ve heard. Perhaps you could p... Read More

The genome nucleotide sequence has been determined of the bacterium GFAJ-1, which has been suggested to survive in high levels of arsenic and in fact incorporate arsenic into macromolecules. The sequence does not address the controversy over whether the bacterium can utilize arsenic. I suppose t... Read More

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Rich Condit... Read More