If you want to understand life on Earth, you need to know about viruses. We have reached the halfway point in my 2016 Columbia University undergraduate virology course. So far we have learned the basics of virus replication: how viruses enter cells, how the genome is reproduced, and how proteins are ...

I was asked to write a commentary for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences to accompany an article entitled SARS-like WIV1-CoV poised for human emergence. I'd like to explain why I wrote it and why I spent the last five paragraphs railing against regulating gain-of-function experiments. Towards the end of ...

On episode #380 of the science show This Week in Virology, the TWiVeroos deliver the weekly Zika Report, then talk about a cryoEM structure of a plant virus that reveals how the RNA genome is packaged in the capsid, and MIMIVIRE, a CRISPR-like defense system in giant eukaryotic viruses. You ...

Evidence is mounting that Zika virus is neurotropic (able to infect cells of the nervous system) and neurovirulent (causes disease of the nervous system) in humans. The most recent evidence comes from a case report of an 81 year old French man who developed meninogoencephalitis 10 days after returning from ...

Data from several clinical studies in Brazil establish a strong link between infection of pregnant women with Zika virus and a variety of birth defects collectively called congenital Zika syndrome. In the latest study conducted in Rio de Janeiro, the authors enrolled 88 pregnant women who had a rash in the previous 5 days. ...