The mantle of world's biggest virus has passed from Mimivirus to Megavirus. But in this case, size doesn't matter. It's the genes that these viruses share and do not share that make this story important. The discovery of Mimivirus in a French cooling tower amazed virologists. At 750 nanometers in ...

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Rich Condit, Alan Dove, and Gabriel Victora Vincent, Rich, Alan and Gabriel review the production of antibodies by B cells, and how high affinity antibodies are selected in the germinal centers of lymph nodes. Please help us by taking our listener survey. [powerpress url="http://traffic.libsyn.com/twiv/TWiV161.mp3"] Click the arrow above to ...

A laboratory in the Netherlands has identified a lethal influenza H5N1 virus strain that is transmitted among ferrets. These findings are under review by the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) to ensure that they do not constitute a threat to human health. Meanwhile both the popular and scientific ...

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Rich Condit, Alan Dove, Dickson Despommier, and Patrick Moore The TWiV team speaks with Patrick Moore about his discovery, with Yuan Chang, of two human tumor viruses, Kaposi's sarcoma herpesvirus and Merkel cell polyomavirus. Please help us by taking our listener survey. [powerpress url="http://traffic.libsyn.com/twiv/TWiV160.mp3"] Click the arrow above to ...

According to the New York Times (Why Science Majors Change Their Minds), the decline in the number of science majors in the United States has come about in part because the subject matter is too difficult. If this explanation is true, then we have not properly prepared these students in ...