Not long after the appearance of an outbreak of viral disease, first scientists, and then newswriters, blame it all on mutation of the virus. It happened during the Ebolavirus outbreak in West Africa, and now it's happening with Zika virus. The latest example is by parasitologist Peter Hotez, who writes in ...

Mass die-offs of tilapia by a novel orthomyxo-like virus, Ian Lipkin's editorial on the movie Vaxxed, and new vaccines to prevent dengue virus infections, including a human challenge model, are topics of episode #384 of the science show This Week in Virology. With guests Ian Lipkin and Nischay Mishra from the Center ...

Six months after Zika virus became a household word, we now know the three-dimensional structure of the virus particle. And it looks like very much like other flaviviruses, such as West Nile and dengue viruses. In the old days, solving a virus structure was a big deal. A virus is, after ...

Esper Kallas and the Merry TWiXters analyze the latest data on Zika virus and microcephaly in Brazil, and discuss publications on a mouse model for disease, infection of a fetus, mosquito vector competence, and the cryo-EM structure of the virus particle. All on episode #383 of the science show This Week ...

If the DNA sequence of a cell is like the operating system of a computer, then the smallest cellular OS has just been written. Called Syn3.0, it encodes everything needed to make a viable, autonomously replicating cell. Mycoplasma is a genus of bacteria that are the smallest known free-living organisms. They also have the ...