On episode #376 of the science show This Week in Virology, the TWiV team discusses the latest data on Zika virus, including ocular defects in infants with microcephaly, and isolation of the entire viral genome from fetal brain tissue. You can find TWiV #376 at microbe.tv/twiv.
About eight percent of human DNA is viral – remnants of ancestral infections with retroviruses. These endogenous retroviral sequences do not produce infectious viruses, and most are considered to be junk DNA. But some of them provide important functions. The protein called syncytin, which is essential for formation of the placenta, originally came to the …
On episode #268 of the science show This Week in Virology, Vincent, Alan, Kathy, and Ashlee discuss fomites in physicians offices, plant virus factories involved in aphid transmission, and clues from the bat genome about flight and immunity. You can find TWiV #268 at www.microbe.tv/twiv.
On episode #267 of the science show This Week in Virology, Vincent, Alan, Rich and Kathy review a protease essential for influenza pathogenesis in mice, and directionality of rhinovirus RNA exit from the capsid. You can find TWiV #267 at www.microbe.tv/twiv.
On episode #246 of the science show This Week in Virology, Vincent, Alan, Rich, and Kathy discuss the huge Pandoravirus, virologists planning H7N9 gain of function experiments, and limited access to the HeLa cell genome sequence. You can find TWiV #246 at www.microbe.tv/twiv. We recorded this episode of TWiV as a Google hangout on air. Consequently …
The discovery of the giant Mimivirus and Megavirus amazed virologists (and also many others). Their virions (750 nanometers) and DNA genomes (1,259,000 base pairs) were the biggest ever discovered, shattering the notions that viruses could not be seen with a light microscope, and that viral genomes were smaller than bacterial genomes. Now two even bigger viruses have been discovered, …
Pandoravirus, bigger and unlike anything seen before Read More »
