On episode 34 of the podcast "This Week in Virology", Vincent, Alan, and Stephen Morse discuss progressive vaccinia in a smallpox vaccinee, arsenic and influenza in mice, facemasks and flu transmission, and antigenic and genetic analyses of the new H1N1 influenza virus. [powerpress url="http://traffic.libsyn.com/twiv/TWiV034.mp3"] Click the arrow above to play, ...

A new member of the arenavirus family, Lujo virus, has been identified in patients who died during an outbreak of hemorrhagic fever in late 2008. Sequence analysis reveals that Lujo is a new arenavirus, genetically distinct from other members of the family which includes Lassa virus. A patient with unexplained ...

The microneutralization assay is another technique used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to determine that some adults have serum cross-reactive antibodies to the new influenza H1N1 virus. Let's explore how this assay works. Viral replication is often studied in the laboratory by infecting cells that are grown ...

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have determined that some adults have serum cross-reactive antibodies to the new influenza H1N1 virus. One of the techniques used to reach this conclusion is the hemagglutination inhibition (HI) assay. How does this assay work? To understand the HI assay, we must discuss the ...

Thanks to Chris Condayan and Ray Ortega of the American Society for Microbiology for recording and editing TWiV live at the ASM General Meeting in Philadelphia, 19 May 2009.