In the 19th century the word ‘virus€™ was used to describe the cause of any contagious disease. How it came to describe the very small intracellular parasites that we know today is a fascinating story that illustrates our evolving concepts of infectious agents. Long before bacteria, fungi, and viruses were identified, it was known that …
I usually don’t post TWiM episodes here, but #90 has a lot of virology. In this episode, recorded in La Jolla, CA at the annual meeting of the Southern California Branch of the American Society for Microbiology, I first speak with Laurene Mascola, Chief of Acute Communicable Diseases at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. Dr. …
One of my goals as a science communicator is to be Earth’s virology professor. To do this I teach an undergraduate virology course at Columbia University and at iTunes University. This past summer I ported my undergraduate virology course to Coursera.org where I reached 26,000 students. My next virology course at Coursera, How viruses cause disease, …
I was scheduled to deliver a lecture on picornaviruses to a virology class at Yale University this week, but had to cancel at the last minute. I prepared this screencast to make up for my absence. The Picornaviridae is a family of non-enveloped, positive-strand RNA viruses which contains some well known viruses including poliovirus, rhinovirus, …
Millions of New Yorkers were immunized against smallpox within a few weeks in April 1947. The stimulus for this mass immunization was the importation of smallpox by a businessman who had acquired the disease during his travels. While we are in the middle of a massive influenza immunization campaign, it is useful to review the …
Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Dick Despommier, Alan Dove, and Rich Condit On episode 48 of the podcast “This Week in Virology”, Vincent, Dick, Alan and Rich revisit a vaccinia virus lab accident and viral vaccines produced in plants, then talk about an iPhone app to track infectious diseases, flying foxes, and an inhaled measles vaccine. [powerpress url=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/twiv/TWiV048.mp3″] Click …
