The first immortal human cell line ever produced, HeLa, originated from a cervical adenocarcinoma taken from Henrietta Lacks. The cell line grew so well that it was used in many laboratories and soon was found to contaminate other cell lines. Now HeLa RNA has made its way into human sequence databases. Although the cause of …
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 …
On episode #212 of the science show This Week in Virology, the TWiVerers answer listener email about genetically modified chickens, a hendra vaccine for horses, online education, curing color blindness, Roosevelt and polio, Th cells, and much more. You can find TWiV #212 at www.microbe.tv/twiv.
On episode #197 of the science show This Week in Virology, Vincent travels to the University of Connecticut to meet up with Professor Philip I. Marcus to discuss his development of the single cell cloning technique in the early 1950s. You can find TWiV #197 at www.microbe.tv/twiv.
Shortly after I wrote about my years of experience with HeLa cells, I was contacted by author Rebecca Skloot. One of her many questions was how I knew that I had produced 800 billion HeLa cells in my laboratory over 26 years. I learned that she was writing a book about Henrietta Lacks, whose tumor …
If you have been following the results of my experiments on inhibition of rhinovirus replication by ZnCl2, you know that I’ve been trying to determine why concentrations of the salt higher than 0.1 mM are toxic to HeLa cells. I have found that 0.1 mM ZnCl2 does inhibit rhinovirus plaque formation but not sufficiently to …
Rhinovirus and zinc part 5: Magnesium is not the culprit Read More »
