What is wrong with this paragraph from today’s New York Times that describes the origin of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) coronavirus: Health officials confirmed Wednesday that bats in Saudi Arabia were the source of the mysterious virus that has sickened 96 people in the Middle East, killing 47 of them. Here is the …
Part of MERS-CoV nucleotide sequence found in a bat Read More »
Discutiremos acerca de los procesos y las enzimas que participan en la sÃntesis de RNA a partir de templados de RNA y como la sÃntesis de RNA se utiliza para maximizar la capacidad codificante del genoma viral.
I spoke with Robert Herriman, executive editor of The Global Dispatch, about the proposed avian influenza H7N9 virus gain of function experiments on Dispatch Radio.
A group of virologists lead by Yoshihiro Kawaoka and Ron Fouchier have sent a letter to Nature and Science outlining the experiments they propose to carry out with influenza H7N9 virus. Avian influenza H7N9 virus has caused over 130 human infections in China with 43 fatalities. The source of the virus is not known but …
Virologists plan influenza H7N9 gain of function experiments Read More »
The discovery of the giant Mimivirus and Megavirus amazed virologists (and also many others). Their virions (750 nanometers) and DNA genomes (1,259,000 base pairs) were the biggest ever discovered, shattering the notions that viruses could not be seen with a light microscope, and that viral genomes were smaller than bacterial genomes. Now two even bigger viruses have been discovered, …
Pandoravirus, bigger and unlike anything seen before Read More »
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 »
