Written with Amy Rosenfeld, Ph.D. By infecting organotypic brain slice cultures from embryonic mice, we have shown that Zika virus has always been neurotropic. The same culture system provides information on how Zika virus infection of the developing brain might lead to microcephaly. The small heads observed in microcephalic children ...

https://youtu.be/ZBhWPOwzuEo From Indiana University, Vincent and Kathy speak with Tuli Mukhopadhyay, John Patton, and Adam Zlotnick about their careers and their work on alphaviruses, hepatitis B virus, and rotaviruses. Click arrow to play Download TWiV 466 (40 MB .mp3, 66 min) Subscribe (free): iTunes, RSS, email Become a patron of TWiV! Show notes at microbe.tv/twiv

Written with Amy Rosenfeld, Ph.D. Zika virus has been infecting humans since at least the 1950s (and probably earlier), but epidemics of infection have only been observed in the past ten years and congenital Zika syndrome in the last two. Two hypotheses emerged to explain this new pattern of disease: ...

Theodora Hatziioannou joins the TWiV team to discuss a macaque model for AIDS, and how a cell protein that blocks HIV-1 infection interacts with double-stranded RNA. Click arrow to play Download TWiV 465 (53 MB .mp3, 88 min) Subscribe (free): iTunes, RSS, email Become a patron of TWiV! Show notes at microbe.tv/twiv

What would happen to an RNA virus if its genome were placed in a bad neighborhood? The answer is that fitness plummets. RNA virus populations are not composed of a single defined nucleic acid sequence, but are dynamic distributions of many nonidentical but related members. In the past I have referred ...