In many viral infections, clinical symptoms such as fever, tissue damage, pain, and nausea are a consequence of the immune response. Damage caused by the immune system is known as immunopathology. For some viruses that do not directly kill cells (non-cytolytic viruses) the immune response is the main cause of disease. Immunopathology may be caused …
The cellular translation machinery is frequently modified in virus-infected cells. Antiviral defense systems or stress responses may be initiated to inhibit protein synthesis and restrict virus replication. On the other hand, many viral genomes encode proteins that modify the cellular translation apparatus to favor the production of viral proteins over those of the cell. One …
I previously discussed the idea that new human virus infections will continue to emerge from animal hosts. Stephen Morse, my colleague here at Columbia, has called this collection of viruses the ‘zoonotic pool’. How many viruses are in this pool? Here are Dr. Morse’s calculations: assume that there are 50,000 vertebrates on earth, each of …
I just heard President Obama, in his inaugural address, say the words “We will restore science to its rightful place”. What does he mean by this? In “The Audacity of Hope”, the book President Obama wrote in 2006 to set forth his thoughts on “reclaiming the American dream”, he suggests that we will need to …
The oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV), which has been used to eradicate poliomyelitis in much of the world, was developed by Dr. Albert Sabin during the 1940s and 1950s. This live virus vaccine was produced by passing the three poliovirus serotypes in various cell cultures and searching for variants with reduced neurovirulence. In the days before …
Vincent and Jeremy recorded TWiV #16 in Saanen, Switzerland, at the 19th Challenge in Virology. They review the meeting, and discuss implications of a new HIV-1 sequence from 1960 for the origin of AIDS. Click the arrow above to play, or right-click to download TWiV #16
