A second virophage has been identified. The name does not signify a virus that infects another virus - it means virus eater. The story of virophages begins with the giant mimivirus, originally isolated from a cooling tower in the United Kingdom. It is the largest known virus, with a capsid ...

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Dickson Despommier, Alan Dove, Rich Condit, and Marc Pelletier This Week in Virology and Futures in Biotech join together in a science mashup to talk about a virophage at the origin of DNA transposons, and unintended spread of a recombinant retrovirus. [powerpress url="http://traffic.libsyn.com/twiv/TWiV125.mp3"] Click the arrow above to play, or ...

After the eradication of smallpox in 1980, the World Health Organization called for destruction of known remaining stocks of the virus. The United States and Russia, which hold the known stocks of smallpox virus, have not destroyed their stocks. The WHO met in January 2011 to debate the future of ...

I joined Marc Pelletier and Ruedi Aebersold on episode 76 of Futures in Biotech for a conversation about how mass spectrometry has become one of the most important technologies in our move towards personalized medicine. We also talk about systems biology, a topic we first discussed in TWiV #121. [powerpress ...

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Dickson Despommier, Alan Dove, Rich Condit, and Grant McFadden On episode #124 of the podcast This Week in Virology, Vincent, Dickson, Alan, Rich, and Grant discuss a tanapoxvirus protein that inhibits tumor necrosis factor, purging tumors with myxoma virus, and destruction of the last known stocks of smallpox virus. [powerpress ...