Virophages (the name means virus eater) were first discovered to replicate only in amoeba infected with the giant mimiviruses or mamaviruses. They reduce yields of the giant viruses, and also decrease killing of the host cell. Another virophage called mavirus has been found to integrate into the genome of its host and behaves like an inducible antiviral defense system …
By David Tuller, DrPH David Tuller is academic coordinator of the concurrent masters degree program in public health and journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. The past year has been a disaster for proponents of the PACE trial. They have faced growing international resistance to their exaggerated claims that cognitive behavior therapy and graded …
Trial By Error, Continued: The New FITNET Trial for Kids Read More »
The popular history of HIV/AIDS describes a man known as Patient Zero, a sexually active flight attendant who traveled the globe and initiated the AIDS epidemic in North America. A new analysis of the viral genome recovered from his serum and that of other patients in the 1970s proves beyond a doubt that he was …
Endosymbionts, organisms that may live inside of another cell, can be infected with viruses. An example is Wolbachia, which lives inside the cells of insects and nematodes, and is infected with Wolbachia phage WO. It’s always been a puzzle how viruses of endosymbionts pass through the host cell to infect their host. A study of …
I spoke with Eva Harris of the University of California, Berkeley, on the state of Zika virus in Nicaragua.
A novel coronavirus isolated from bats in China is unusual because the genome contains a gene from a virus in a completely different family, the Reoviridae (link to paper). The finding suggests that recombination occurred between a (+) strand RNA virus and a virus with a segmented, double-stranded RNA genome. The unusual recombinant virus was identified …
