Poliovirus has been found in sewage in Israel. The virus detected is not vaccine-derived poliovirus; it is wild-type 1 poliovirus, the strain that occurs naturally in the wild and which the World Health Organization is trying very hard to eradicate from the planet. As part of the global effort to eradicate poliovirus, environmental samples from …
Poliovirus silently (and not so silently) spreads Read More »
I interviewed structural virologist David Bhella in Manchester, England at the spring meeting of the Society for General Microbiology. MWV Episode 74 – David Bhella – Electron-cryomicroscopy from microbeworld on Vimeo.
Viruses are obligate intracellular parasites: they must enter a cell to reproduce. To gain access to the cell interior, a virus must first bind to one or more specific receptor molecules on the cell surface. Cell receptors for viruses do not exist only to serve viruses: they also have cellular functions. An example is the transferrin …
The biggest known viruses are Mimivirus (750 nanometer capsid, 1.2 million base pair DNA) and Megavirus (680 nanometer capsid, 1.3 million base pair DNA). These giant viruses have all been isolated from environmental samples, and many infect amoebae. A new Mimivirus has now been isolated from a human patient with pneumonia. To search for giant …
The mucosal membranes that line our respiratory, alimentary, and urogenital tracts and the outer surface of the eyes are portals of entry for microbes. The cells at these surfaces have functions that require that they are exposed to the environment – for example, gaseous exchange in the lung between inspired air and the blood. Mucus, …
Microbial communities are found at many different sites on the human body, including nasal passages, oral cavities, skin, gastrointestinal tract, and urogenital tract. These commensal microbes shape the immune and metabolic status of the host and play important roles in human health and disease. The brain is one organ that has been assumed to be …
