by Gertrud U. Rey In 1998, a British doctor named Andrew Wakefield published a paper in the British journal The Lancet. In this paper, Wakefield implied that the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine may cause developmental disorders such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The paper received wide publicity, and subsequently, MMR vaccination rates began …
A listener of the science podcast This Week in Virology asked in 2010 whether there are viruses that infect mitochondria: Is there a virus that infects mitochondria? It€™s an organelle that has its own genetic material and polymerase, so it could replicate a virus. Does the mitochondrial double membrane and the cell membrane impose a …
When viruses are introduced into a new population, selection pressures can lead to evolution of both pathogen and host. The pathogen must adapt to a new host, while the latter can become resistant to infection, leading to an arms race. An archetypal example of such host-pathogen evolution is illustrated by the attempt to control rabbit …
Rabbits and viruses: An iconic example of natural selection Read More »
by Gertrud U. Rey Timothy Ray Brown, also known as the Berlin patient (reviewed in a previous post), was the only person ever to be cured of HIV/AIDS. Until last week.
Viruses have no intrinsic means of locomotion, but because of their small size their movement can be driven by Brownian motion. Propagation of viruses is dependent on essentially random encounters with potential hosts and host cells. An exception appears to be chloroviruses, which can attract their host from a distance.
by Gertrud Rey Although cancer therapies have improved dramatically in recent years, the main options for treating cancer still consist of surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy. This limitation is a problem for aggressive cancers like glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), brain cancers which are typically resistant to traditional therapies.
