This Week in Virology

Latest Episodes:

TWiV 192: Viral tertulia Jul 22, 2012

Show notes

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Alan Dove, and Rich Condit

Vincent, Alan, and Rich answer listener email about bioinformatics, insects, influenza, laboratory classes, commensalism, reproducibility of data, and more.

Subscribe to TWiV (free) in iTunes , at the Zune Marketplace, by the RSS feed, by email, or listen on your mobile device with the Microbeworld app.

Links for this episode:

Vaccinia virus sequence from patient with vaccine complication (pdf)
The evolution of intellectual freedom (thanks, Robin!)
Free access to British scientific research (Guardian)
xTAG respiratory viral panel
Houston rabies case (Statesman)
Tertulia (Wikipedia)
TWiV on Facebook
Letters read on TWiV 192

Weekly Science Picks

Alan - The Microbial Olympics (supplementary information)Rich - PharmaJet needle free injection system Vincent - Microbes and Evolution by Roberto Kolter and Stanley Maloy (paperback and Kindle)

Listener Pick of the Week

Varun - Agile Gene by Matt RidleySizun - Plague IncRicardo - TED-EDKristopher - Ed Yong on Econtalk

Send your virology questions and comments (email or mp3 file) to twiv@twiv.tv, or call them in to 908-312-0760. You can also post articles that you would like us to discuss at microbeworld.org and tag them with twiv.

TWiV 191: When two rights make a wrong Jul 15, 2012

Show notes

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Alan Dove, Rich Condit, and Nissin Moussatche

Nissin joins the TWiV crew to discuss an outbreak of lethal disease among Cambodian children, and recombination among attenuated herpesvirus vaccines leading to pathogenic viruses.

Subscribe to TWiV (free) in iTunes , at the Zune Marketplace, by the RSS feed, by email, or listen on your mobile device with the Microbeworld app.

Links for this episode:

Outbreak in Cambodia (CNN)
Pathogen mix in Cambodian illness (ProMedMail)
Undiagnosed illness in Cambodia (WHO)
Enterovirus 71 (virology blog)
Recombination among attenuated vaccines (Science)
An outbreak of irony (Ed Yong)
Infectious laryngotracheitis
Gallid herpesvirus 1 (Wikipedia)
Iltovirus (ViralZone)
TWiV on Facebook
Letters read on TWiV 191

Weekly Science Picks

Alan - H5N1 genetic changes inventoryRich - Mythbusters: Diet Coke and Mentos (YouTube channel)Nissin - The Pox and the Covenant by Tony Williams, and Tired of War by Tereza BatistaVincent - FAQ: The 'snake bite' portion of your thesis defense

Listener Pick of the Week

Gopal - All's not fair in science and publishingLuis - The Origin of AIDS by Jacques Pepin (Nature review)Sven - Visualizing information flow in science

TWiV 190: The second ferret of the Apocalypse Jul 01, 2012

Show notes

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Alan Dove, and Kathy Spindler

Vincent, Alan, and Kathy review selection of influenza H5N1 viruses that can transmit among ferrets by aerosol.

Links for this episode:

Airborne transmission of H5N1 among ferrets (Science)
Potential for H5N1 evolution (Science)
H5N1 (Science)
The ferrets of fear
Jim's podcast list (pdf)
TWiV on Facebook
Letters read on TWiV 190

Weekly Science Picks

Kathy - Wind map Vincent - The A-Z of Epidemiology (YouTube)

Listener Pick of the Week

Kristoffer - How to read a paperNeva - Electricity from viruses

TWiV 189: Five postdocs in Glasgow Jun 24, 2012

Show notes

Vincent returns to the Centre for Virus Research at the University of Glasgow and meets with postdocs to discuss their science and their careers.

Links for this episode:

MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research
Stop CMV
Photos of my Glasgow visit (Facebook and VirusTalk)
TWiV on Facebook

TWiV 188 - Haggis, single malt, and viruses Jun 15, 2012

Show notes

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Massimo Palmarini, John MacLauchlan, Emma Thomson, and Hande Harmanci.

Vincent travels to Scotland to meet with members of the Centre for Virus Research at the University of Glasgow to discuss their work on hepatitis C virus and jaagsiekte sheep retrovirus.

Links for this episode:

MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research
Aaron Shatkin, 77 (virology blog)
Photos of my Glasgow visit (Facebook and VirusTalk)
TWiV on Facebook
Letters read on TWiV 188

Weekly Science Picks

Vincent - Microbe art

Listener Pick of the Week

Judi - Cell Imaging (Mac App Store)

TWiV 187: The mummy Jun 11, 2012

Show notes

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello and Rich Condit

Vincent and Rich discuss recovery of a hepatitis B viral genome from a 16th century Korean mummy, and personal omics profiling of an individual over a 14 month period.

Links for this episode:

Tracing HBV to the 16th century (Hepatology)
HBV on TWiV
Precautions with ancient DNA (Science)
Personal omics profile over 14 months (Cell)
A geneticist's research turns personal (NY Times)
Mike Snyder on Futures in Biotech
The DASH diet
TWiV on Facebook
Letters read on TWiV 187

Weekly Science Picks

Rich - The Checklist by Atul GawandeVincent - Artologica

Listener Pick of the Week

David - Cracking your genetic code (Nova)Josh - The nuclearization of biology is a threat to health and security (pdf)

TWiV 186: From Buda to stump grinding Jun 03, 2012

Show notes

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Alan Dove, and Rich Condit

The TWiV chiefs tackle reader email about how to pronounce Buda, Texas, grinding tree stumps, and much more.

Links for this episode:

Detecting antibodies or antigens by ELISA
Peter Wildy Prize
Biosafety levels
Baltimore classification at Viral Zone
TWiV on Facebook
Letters read on TWiV 186

Weekly Science Picks

Alan - World Wide Lightning Location NetworkRich - Steve Jobs by Walter IsaacsonVincent - The Ocelloid

Listener Pick of the Week

lafrenchfille - whatshouldwecallgradschoolNeva - Antiviral drugs by Carl ZimmerSergio - APSnet

TWiV 185: Dead parrots and live Wildcats May 27, 2012

Show notes

Vincent visits with members of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Northwestern University School of Medicine to discuss their work on herpesviruses and parainfluenzaviruses.

Links for this episode: