Here is a follow-up to last week's article that described a case of variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease in a Texas resident caused by ingestion of BSE-contaminated beef 14 years ago. A 59 year old male patient was admitted to the trauma unit in Lancaster, PA with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. There was substantial ...

On episode #357 of the science show This Week in Virology, Jens Kuhn joins the TWiVomics to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of viral taxonomy, including its history and evolution, how viruses are ordered, and why T. rex was classified without having a living isolate. You can find TWiV #357 at www.microbe.tv/twiv.

Spongiform encephalopathies are neurodegenerative diseases caused by misfolding of normal cellular prion proteins. A 2014 case of variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob prion disease in the United States was probably caused by eating beef from animals with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease. Human spongiform encephalopathies are placed into three groups: infectious, familial or genetic, and sporadic, ...

On episode #356 of the science show This Week in Virology, Stephanie joins the super professors to discuss the gut virome of children with serious malnutrition, caterpillar genes acquired from parasitic wasps, and the effect of adding chemokines to a simian immunodeficiency virus DNA vaccine. You can find TWiV #356 at ...

Parasitic wasps (in the order Hymenoptera) inject their eggs into lepidopteran hosts, where the eggs go through their developmental stages. Along with the eggs, the wasps also deliver viruses carrying genes encoding proteins that inhibit caterpillar immune defenses. Some of these genes are permanently transferred to the lepidopteran host where they have assumed ...