On episode #356 of the science show This Week in Virology, Stephanie joins the super professors to discuss the gut virome of children with serious malnutrition, caterpillar genes acquired from parasitic wasps, and the effect of adding chemokines to a simian immunodeficiency virus DNA vaccine. You can find TWiV #356 at www.microbe.tv/twiv.
Parasitic wasps (in the order Hymenoptera) inject their eggs into lepidopteran hosts, where the eggs go through their developmental stages. Along with the eggs, the wasps also deliver viruses carrying genes encoding proteins that inhibit caterpillar immune defenses. Some of these genes are permanently transferred to the lepidopteran host where they have assumed new defensive functions against other …
Wasps do a gain-of-function experiment in caterpillars Read More »
