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.
David Bhella on electron-cryomicroscopy Read More »
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
Dual virus-receptor duel Read More »
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 largest viral genome from a human Read More »
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has released a summary of notifiable diseases in the US for the year 2011. These statistics are collected and compiled from reports sent by state health departments and territories to the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS). According to the CDC, a notifiable disease is one for which
Notifiable diseases in the US for 2011 Read More »
Margaret K. Offermann, MD, PhD, President of FASEB, sent the following email: The Senate Appropriations Committee is expected to consider the Labor, Health and Human Services (LHHS) bill that will provide fiscal year (FY) 2014 funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Although we don’t know when the House Appropriations Committee will vote on NIH
Federal funding for science research Read More »
