MicrobeWorld

This episode: Bacteria in mosquitoes could prevent Dengue fever!

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A team of researchers from The Wistar Institute has identified a protein that could serve as a target for reprogramming immune system cells exhausted by exposure to chronic viral infection into more effective "soldiers" against certain viruses like HIV, hepatitis C, and hepatitis B, as well as s... Read More

El podcast del Microbio Nº190 and 191 describes the recent metagenomic results that point towards the existence of a 4th do... Read More

One of two papers on avian influenza H5N1 virus that caused such a furor in the past six months was published today in the journal Nature. I have read it, and I can assure you that the results do not enable the construction of a deadly biological weapon. Instead, they illuminate important requir... Read More

A year has passed since the last reported case of poliomyelitis in India, which occurred on 13 January 2011 in a two year old girl in Howrah, West Bengal. 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

A dairy cow in California is the fourth known American case of mad cow disease, which is caused by prions, infectious agents composed only of protein (the story hit the press the day after my lecture on this type of illness). Unlike viruses, prions have no nucleic acid and no protective coat. Bu... Read More

Raihan writes:

Hi Guys,

I saw this video during the course of listening to TWiP. Is there any parasitic truth behind this phenomenon?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mL_48wUQeXQ

Amaz... Read More

The virologists who carried out the contentious experiments on influenza H5N1 transmission in ferrets have agreed to remove certain details from their manuscript, according to ScienceInsider. This is a bad day for virology, and for science in general. The decision by the NSABB sets a precedent f... Read More

Damon writes:

I've been having an enjoyable time on my commute lately catching up with TWiV. Today I listened to #26 (Poxviruses), which included a discussion of Tysabri and PML. I work at Millipore which sells many products that go into a MAb production train, includ... Read More

The Public Library of Science's open access journals just release its 2009 June Progress Report in which they project "a publishing business model projected to be 100% self-sufficient in 2010."

"PLoS journals use a business model that recovers expenses — including administration of peer revie... Read More

The Nº 109 of the "El podcast del microbio" deals with the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico caused by the accident in the Deepwater Hor... Read More

Sven writes:

Dear TWiV Captain and Officers,

I am a Swedish listener in my fifties, with a neolithic MSc in computer science and nowadays active within software quality (and yes, that's an oxymoron...). I found TWiV in September 2010 and I hav... Read More

First, you may be asking yourself – Why viral bioinformatics? Good question! Although it’s true that much in the world of bioinformatics can be applied to all manner of protein and DNA sequences, there are a number of resources that are specific for viruses and there are a number of analyses tha... Read More

The third annual installment of my virology course at Columbia University, Biology W3310, has begun, and all the lectures will be available online. Read More

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello,  Read More

The hunt continues for novel antiviral agents especially against the pandemic H1N1 virus. In this article, a drug that has been used to fight HIV infection and vesicular stomatitis now appears to have the potential to block influenzavirus infection by inhibiting neuraminidase. This may be yet ... 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

On episode #89 of the podcast This Week in Virology, Vincent and Alan review recent findings on the association of the retrovirus XMRV with ME/CFS, reassortment of 2009 pandemic H1N1 influenza virus in swine,... Read More

Frederick C. Neidhardt, F.G. Novy Distinguished University Professor, Emeritus, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Michigan Medical School at Ann Arbor, authors a post at the Small Things Considered blog on the dawn of proteomics, the large-scale study of proteins, with a f... Read More