With the influenza season approaching in the northern hemisphere, vaccination is a means of preventing infection. If you have egg allergies, you no longer have to worry about receiving influenza vaccine. Because most influenza vaccines are grown in embryonated chicken eggs, and may contain residual egg protein, their use in individuals with egg allergy has …
Influenza vaccine is safe for those with egg allergies Read More »
Mitochondria are descended from bacteria that invaded cells 1.5 billion years ago and never left. The mitochondrial genome is like that of bacteria: circular double-stranded DNA, only smaller. And just like the genome of bacteria, RNA can be made from both strands of mitochondrial DNA – which results in the formation of dsRNA. Fortunately there …
Some antiviral drugs, like acyclovir for treatment of herpes simplex virus infections, are chain terminators that block RNA or DNA synthesis. They are modified nucleotides that can be incorporated into a growing RNA strand, but no additional nucleotides can be added. Amazingly, a cell protein has been found that can synthesize antiviral chain terminators.
By Gertrud U. Rey Although antiretroviral therapy (ART) has been highly effective at controlling HIV-1 viral loads in the bloodstream of infected individuals, the virus remains latent in infected cells and starts replicating within a couple of weeks upon termination of therapy.
The global withdrawal of the Sabin type 2 poliovirus vaccine is a test of the feasibility of the plan, declared by the World Health Assembly in 1988, to eradicate all polioviruses.
The development of high throughput nucleic acid sequencing tools has rapidly increased the pace of virus discovery in the past 20 years. Yet in that time, while the largest DNA genomes have increased by nearly ten times, the largest known RNA viral genome has only increase in size by a tenth. This situation has now …
Planaria and mollusks yield the biggest RNA virus genomes Read More »
