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. …
The need to re-formulate the influenza virus vaccine in response to viral antigenic drift and shift makes for complex logistics of vaccine production and administration. Surveillance programs must be conducted each year to identify strains that are likely to predominate and cause disease. Wouldn€™t it be simpler if a single vaccine could be developed that …
John Coffin, Professor of Genetics and Molecular Microbiology at Tufts University, studies the molecular biology and evolution of retroviruses. He wrote a commentary (A new virus for old diseases?) that accompanied the publication by Lombardi and colleagues of the finding of the new retrovirus XMRV in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome, and has spoken widely …
All known virus particles can be placed into one of two general categories: enveloped or non-enveloped. Viruses that fall into the former category are characterized by a lipid membrane derived from the host cell, and one or more nuclecapsid proteins that interact with the viral genome. A virus that infects an archaeal host may constitute …
