virology
sa smith | May 26, 2008This is a repost from the old ERV. A retrotransposed ERV :P I dont trust them staying up at Blogger, and the SEED overlords are letting me have 4 reposts a week, so Im gonna take advantage of that!
I am going to try to add more comments to these posts for the old readers-- Think of these as 'directors cut' posts ;)
Poor Behe. Its a hard-knock life, for kooks. Another HIV-1 paper came out today that utilized the evolution of Vpu to make their experiments work better. So I thought Id better move this post over so you all could enjoy it again :)
August 2, 2007, over six months ago, I wrote…
sa smith | May 18, 2008If you are looking for a 'hero' to look up to in the viral evolution world, you probably couldnt find a better choice than Louis Villarreal of the University of California, Irvine. I mean, he is like *the* definition of someone who came from a tough background, had to struggle through school a bit, but followed their passion to become a leader and innovator in an extraordinarily competitive field.
Villarreal is a Mexican American who grew up in friggen East LA. First one of his family to graduate from high school, he tested the academic waters by first attending community college, then…
grrlscientist | April 13, 2008tags: hamster, PetSmart, lawsuit, lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus, LCMV, zoonosis
Portrait of a murderer:
A Siberian dwarf hamster, Phodopus sungorus.
Orphaned image.
I just learned that a lawsuit was recently filed in Massachusetts Superior Court on behalf of a man who died one month after receiving a transplanted liver that was later determined to be infected with lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV). Apparently, the organ donor purchased a pet hamster from a PetSmart in Warwick, Rhode Island, and this hamster was later shown to be infected with this deadly virus.
LCMV is…
grrlscientist | August 22, 2007tags: researchblogging.org, Egyptian Rousette, Egyptian fruit bat, Rousettus aegyptiacus, Marburg hemorrhagic fever virus, Ebola hemorrhagic fever virus, Uganda, zoonoses, pathogen
Portrait of an Egyptian Rousette or Egyptian fruit bat, Rousettus aegyptiacus.
Image: Wikipedia
Like something out of a sci-fi novel, a man from Uganda died a horrible, bloody death from Marburg hemorrhagic fever this past July. As a result, scientists from the USA and the African nation of Gabon raced to the area to search for the source of this disease, and they may have finally discovered it. The team tested…
grrlscientist | April 30, 2007Scientists say that that an Ebola-like virus, viral hemorrhagic septicemia (VHS), is killing all species of fish in the Great Lakes. Due to a lack of genetic resistance to VHS, fish populations could ultimately be damaged in the same way that the smallpox virus struck Native Americans and Dutch elm disease decimated elm trees, says Jim Winton, chief of fish health at the U.S. Geological Survey in Seattle.
VHS was unexpectedly found in the Great Lakes in 2005, in addition to the St. Lawrence Seaway, the Niagara River and an inland lake in New York. Last year, VHS caused large kills that…
grrlscientist | April 11, 2007One of the biggest challenges to producing flu vaccine lies in the fact that so far, scientists have had to grow it in hens' eggs. Not only is this process cumbersome and slow, but it is often difficult to get the vaccine to grow as one wishes, and further, each egg only yields enough of the flu virus to make a single dose of vaccine. Additionally, problems could potentially be encountered if the bird flu epidemic spreads to those very flocks that provide eggs that produce the vaccine. Clearly, an alternative to hens' eggs was necessary.
"When you need hundreds of millions of fertilized eggs…
grrlscientist | February 22, 2007tags: Tasmanian Devil, cancer, Devil Facial Tumor Disease, endangered species
A healthy Tasmanian devil, Sarcophilus harrisii, is shown in this photo from Tasmania's Department of Primary Industries. Researchers estimate the wild population has fallen from 140,000 in the 1990s to 80,000 due to Devil Facial Tumor Disease (DFTD), an illness that creates grotesque tumors on the animals' snouts that lead to starvation within a year.
A cancer that causes facial tumors on Australia's Tasmanian devil has brought the carnivorous marsupial to the brink of extinction, a leading researcher has said…
grrlscientist | December 8, 2006
Ebola Virus, one of the most deadly of all viral diseases, has killed more than 5,000 gorillas in the Republic of Congo and Gabon, located in central Africa. In addition to commercial hunting of gorillas, this outbreak of ebola could be sufficient to push gorillas into extinction.
The study, published in the US journal Science, looked at gorilla colonies in Republic of Congo and Gabon. Ebola is also blamed for many chimpanzee deaths.
Ebola is one of the most deadly viruses known to primates, killing more than 1,000 people since it burst upon the medical scene in 1976. Ebola causes a viral…