I’ve been hearing about the vertical farm concept from Dickson Despommier for years – as a faculty colleague of his here at Columbia University Medical Center, and more recently as co-host of TWiV and TWiP. I could not help but be enthusiastic as the idea grew from a seed, to seeing Dickson jetting around the …
Antibodies are an important component of the host defense against viral infection. These molecules, produced 7-14 days after infection, neutralize viral infectivity, thereby limiting the spread of infection. Antibodies are thought to neutralize viral infectivity in several ways: by forming noninfectious aggregates that cannot enter cells, or by blocking virion attachment to cells or uncoating …
Antibodies neutralize viral infectivity inside cells Read More »
How large is the zoonotic pool – all the animal viruses that could one day infect humans? Assuming that there are 50,000 vertebrates on earth, each with 20 viruses, the number is one million – probably a vast underestimate. Determining just how many viruses exist in a variety of animal species is technically feasible, limited …
I joined Marc Pelletier on episode 60 of Futures in Biotech for a conversation with Malcolm Whiteway about one of the most powerful genetic model systems: Saccharomyces cerevisiae. [audio:http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/twit.cachefly.net/fib0069.mp3 | titles=FiB 69] Download FiB #69 (46 MB .mp3, 95 minutes) Download video (231 MB .mp4)
Readers of this blog know that I embrace social media for teaching virology. My experience with two types of social media, blogging and podcasting, has been published as an Opinions piece by PLoS Pathogens (read the full text or download the pdf file). In this article I discuss how social media is becoming an increasingly …
After my lecture on influenza pathogenesis and evolution at the Northeast Laboratory Conference 2010 in Portland, Maine, I was asked if it is necessary to receive the influenza vaccine every year. This question was precipitated by my statement that the 2010-11 trivalent influenza vaccine contains the same swine-origin H1N1 strain as last year€™s monovalent vaccine. …
