From the January 2008 issue of Microbe: “Well more than 99% of microbes from the environent do not thrive in culture and, historically, remain uncharacterized”. This is an astounding statistic. We only work on what we can propagate, naturally. But many microbes could be adapted to grow in culture, given time and effort. The potential …
I often lecture about polioviruses and poliovirus vaccines, and I am frequently asked why Salk or Sabin did not receive the Nobel Prize. I usually tell students because Salk did not discover anything new, but simply put together existing technologies in a productive way. Sabin once said that Salk didn’t invent anything, what he did …
When journal articles began to appear online in pdf form, I started to collect them on my computer’s hard drive. In theory the pdfs can be accessed very quickly, as opposed to finding a printed article in a filing cabinet. To help find papers more quickly, I devised a filing system with nested folders. Unfortunately, …
If you are thinking about a career in science, you should visit Bio Job Blog. The blog is written by Cliff Mintz of Bioinsights, Inc., a company that offers services related to bioscience and biotech careers, pharmaceutical and science jobs. Bio Job Blog is informative, sometimes amusing, and thought-provoking. Cliff Mintz is a very old …
Virologists rely on the research literature not only to publish their findings, but to keep up with what other virologists are doing. PubMed, a database that provides citations from many life sciences journals and related resources, provides an easy way to search the entire biomedical literature and is used by most virologists on a daily …
I came across an article in Saukvalley.com about VHSV, or viral hemorrhagic septicemia virus, which causes disease in fish. I have never worked on viruses of fish, but they’re fascinating, and economically very, very important. So let’s have a look at what this article is about. VHSV causes a very serious disease of fresh and …
