virology
sa smith | October 6, 2010I think a lot of kids get the wrong impression about the medical field via TV. I mean like, I like 'House'. It is an entertaining TV show. But being an MD is absolutely nothing like that. Its not really a mystery novel. Its more like 'cataract surgery 5 times today... and 15 times this week... yaaay...' and 'pap smears and prescriptions for yeast infections and UTIs all day... yaaay...'
So when I had an opportunity as a 'pre-med' to do summer research, it blew mah mind!!!! Everything everyone was working on was like a little specialized mystery novel. It was both fun and frustrating,…
sa smith | October 4, 2010If theres one question I get over and over and over and over on ERV, its this one:
What kind of viruses are in bat poop??
Until yesterday, I had no idea what to tell the millions of people sending me that Q. Thank GAWD daedalus2u sent me a link to this awesome paper!
Bat Guano Virome: Predominance of Dietary Viruses from Insects and Plants plus Novel Mammalian Viruses
While Im being silly about this, the viruses that infect bats are a really big deal. Im sure youve heard of rabies (if you find a bat in your house and it bites/scratches you, you need to go see a physician ASAP). But bats…
sa smith | September 27, 2010I dont understand people who view food as medicine.
Well, I mean, I guess I do. Theyre terrified of disease X/Y/Z (even if X/Y/Z is treatable/preventable with modern medicine), and they think a component of food helps treat/prevent disease X/Y/Z, so they religiously eat said food.
So I guess I mean to say "People who view food as medicine are being silly."
Obviously, consuming food and getting proper nutrition is important. If you dont get enough Vitamin C, you get scurvy. Dont get enough iron, you get anemia. Dont get enough folic acid, your child is at risk for birth defects. Dont get…
sa smith | September 22, 2010Revenge of teh Chubby Virus!
I know you all have seen the headlines. Again.
More evidence links a virus to obesity, this time in childrenâ
Study: Children Exposed to Adenovirus-36 Likely to Get Obeseâ
Virus Is Linked To Obesity
Can a Cold Lead to Childhood Obesity?
Adenovirus 36 and Obesity in Children and Adolescents
Adenoviruses are ubiquitous. Weve all been infected with lots of them (gets to be a problem when making gene therapy vectors). The older you are, the more likely you have been exposed to the different kinds of adenovirus, to the point where if you are an adult reading this,…
sa smith | August 16, 2010Thanks to BleachGate, this is probably the first time many of you all in the Skeptical Community have heard about Crohns Disease (SPOILER: kid with Chrons gets booted from a 'support' forum for speaking out against woo-'treatments').
Crohns is an inflammatory bowl disease (IBD), where your guts do fun things like shrink until your bowls are obstructed, or your body decides you need more passages out of your intestines (Google 'fistula'. I dare you.), and some times you just good-old-fashioned poop blood. So, dont confuse IBD with IBS, and dont get me started on IBS.
Crohns is the usual grab-…
sa smith | August 11, 2010Paleovirology is one of my favorite topics to read about. Whether its bringing extinct viruses back to life, or finding ancient HIV-1 integration sites, or finding millions of year old viruses in genomes, or studying the modern side-effects of ancient viral infections, I love old viruses just about as much as modern ones.
I even like wild guessing concerning ancient viruses, like this pic from Ancient Egypt:
We *think* this fellow has a bum leg and a cane because of polio!
And there were several 'plagues' that ravaged Ancient Greece. Scientists and scholars have proposed various pathogens,…
sa smith | August 2, 2010Beet black scorch virus.
Family: Tombusviridae
Genus: Necrovirus
I know you all are thinking what Im thinking. LETS MAKE A VACCINE OUTTA THAT! YAY!!!!
A ton of plant vaccine papers have been rolling out on PubMed since I first wrote about them a few months ago. I couldnt resist writing about another cool paper-- How to make a GMO virus that infects plants to make them produce viral proteins for a rotavirus vaccine:
Oral administration of plant-based rotavirus VP6 induces antigen-specific IgAs, IgGs and passive protection in mice
Rotavirus causes diarrhea that kills hundreds of thousands of…
sa smith | July 29, 2010Ummmmmmm...
Hmmm...
Filoviruses are ancient and integrated into mammalian genomes
Hmmmmmm...
Unexpected Inheritance: Multiple Integrations of Ancient Bornavirus and Ebolavirus/Marburgvirus Sequences in Vertebrate Genomes--
This first comprehensive study of its kind demonstrates that the sources of genetic inheritance in vertebrate genomes are considerably more diverse than previously appreciated.
No... no... PLOS received this paper first, but BMC Evolutionary Biology published their paper first... so... no...
Its still neat, but... :-/
sa smith | July 12, 2010There was some big news last week, that believe it or not, did not involve delusional, myopic, hypocritical bloggers on the internet.
FOR REALZ!
At the International Papillomavirus Conference, at a symposium sponsored by QIAGEN, QIAGEN announced that their super awesome HPV test was approved for use in the Third World:
... the careHPV test makes HPV DNA testing simple, effective and affordable for women in low-resource settings. The careHPV Test can be performed by a healthcare worker in a community facility without mains electricity or running water and offers HPV detection results in a…
sa smith | July 8, 2010One of the scary things about filoviruses (eg Ebola, Marburg)... is that we dont know where they comes from. We know how polio is transmitted. We know how HIV-1 is transmitted. We know how influenza is transmitted. We know how rabies is transmitted.
Even if you dont have good vaccines or good therapies, if you know where a virus comes from or how it is transmitted, you can take steps to prevent illness.
But filoviruses....?
One hypothesis is that small mammals are the natural reservoir. A way to look for that would be to study the immunology of lots of small mammals-- Do they have…
grrlscientist | July 1, 2010tags: Following The Mercury Trail, health, environment, ecology, pollution, PCBs, DDT, heavy metals, red tide, human sewage pollution, Stephen Palumbi, TEDTalks, TED Talks, streaming video
There's a tight and surprising link between the ocean's health and ours, says marine biologist Stephen Palumbi. He shows how toxins at the bottom of the ocean food chain find their way into our bodies, with a shocking story of toxic contamination from a Japanese fish market. His work points a way forward for saving the oceans' health -- and humanity's.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks…
grrlscientist | June 1, 2010tags: HIV and 'Flu -- The Vaccine Strategy, microbiology, epidemiology, virology, vaccines, medicine, public health, viruses, influenza, HIV, Seth Berkley, TEDTalks, TED Talks, streaming video
Seth Berkley explains how smart advances in vaccine design, production and distribution are bringing us closer than ever to eliminating a host of global threats -- from AIDS to malaria to flu pandemics.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers…
sa smith | May 12, 2010Earlier this week, Peter Palese visited our Uni (he made it through Oklahomas version of hazing: a night of tornadoes, LOL!).
I gotta say, man, that guy might be one of the biggest names in influenza/virology research. He might have a few hundred publications. He might be a member of the National Academy. But that guy? Peter Palese? Hes got the heart of a BLAGGER!
He gossiped with us students at lunch about kook scientists and anti-vaxers and snake-oil salesmen, it was so much fun! Heres my favorite story :)
Back in the day, when Dr. Palese was cutting his teeth as a scientist, Linus…
sa smith | April 14, 2010One of the reasons I started writing ERV was to help demystify viruses for the general public. To Average Joes/Janes, viruses are scary-ass little buggars-- alien creatures that make you sick, kill you overnight in horrible scary ways, and you never see them coming.
I hope long-time readers of ERV are now aware that while some viruses are 'scary', the fact of the matter is, humans wouldnt exist without them. Hell, probably all life on Earth wouldnt exist without them. We can use them to study principles of evolution that would be impossible with other organisms. Theyve helped us learn…
sa smith | April 12, 2010You all might remember this story from a few years ago:
Contagious Obesity? Identifying The Human Adenoviruses That May Make Us Fat
This is one of the papers that article was based on:
Human adenovirus-36 is associated with increased body weight and paradoxical reduction of serum lipids
Long story short, an adenovirus (virus Ive written about previously) was associated with obesity. That is, people with high BMIs were more likely to have antibodies to Adenovirus-36 than people with normal BMIs, 30%:11%.
Since 2005/2006, scientists have tried to flush out the how/whys behind Ad36-->Obesity…
sa smith | April 6, 2010Super awesome review of viral quasispecies and what they mean, historically and currently:
Unfinished stories on viral quasispecies and Darwinian views of evolution.
They touch on so many good points, I could write about this review for a week! But just read it, cause I think you all can access it for free :P
One point I love: Quasispecies are like A Wrinkle in Time, connecting the origin of life to modern day viruses:
(on the origin of the quasispecies concept) First, there was the interaction between ideas from different fields of science such as physical chemistry and biological evolution…
sa smith | April 3, 2010From my post on testicular cancer and ERVs earlier this week, to Randys balls in the last episode of South Park, the word of the week appears to be "BALLS!"
This trend is continuing, considering Judy Mikovits/the Chronic Fatigue communities vociferous support for anti-vaccination cranks:
The increasing incidence of mumps orchitis: a comprehensive review-- There has been a recent increase in mumps orchitis among pubertal and postpubertal males. These outbreaks can be attributed to a reduction in the uptake of measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine during the early to mid-1990s in children who…
sa smith | March 11, 2010Weve all heard of that stupid book/diet that tries to tell you what to eat based on your blood type. Of course thats stupid and just a gimmic to get you to buy hundreds of dollars of crap 'supplements' for your blood-type (oh for Petes sake...).
I totally didnt know this before I read this neat Nature review, but there are actually viruses out there that can use the histo-blood group antigens (A, B, O) as their receptors!
Noroviruses!
Apparently, Type O are the most susceptible to some kinds of norovirus infection, and Type B are the least.
Now, this might be something other kids learned in…
sa smith | February 19, 2010Antibodies are normally a good thing. Neutralize viruses and bacterial toxins, tag bacteria for complement so they get blown up, tag invading parasites/worms/ew so your immune cells can kill them, antibodies even make nice cancer therapies.
One of the great things about antibodies is that the cells that make them? They 'remember' what theyve seen before. Thats how vaccines work-- you expose someone to a crappy polio virus, your body figures out how to neutralize it, and if youre exposed to Real Virulent Polio, your body has a cheat-sheet. Your body already has memory B-cells that know how…
sa smith | January 13, 2010One 'insider' thing I hope ERV readers learn about science from this blag, is that in science, controversies are completely normal, everyday occurrences. Outsiders might think scientists are 'mean' when dealing with anti-vaxers/Creationists/whatever, but how we treat non-scientists manufacturing a controversy is no different than how we react to one another in a real scientific controversy.
For example, Behe feigned offense when I pointed out he was a friggin IDiot regarding HIV-1 evolution, yet technically, my response to him was muted (what got published was not my first draft *blink*).…