165 posts · 66,844 views
Mystery Rays from Outer Space
165 posts
Sort by Latest Post, Most Popular
View by Condensed, Full
- March 15, 2010
- 06:10 AM
- 9 views
Measles week, part I: Introduction
by iayork in Mystery Rays from Outer Space
Zhong Kui, a Chinese god, punishing two gods of measles (1862)
I’ve talked before about measles incidence and the effect of vaccination. Now I’m going to spend this whole week talking about measles deaths, because I ended up with more than I could cover in one or two posts. So this is Part I of a [...]... Read more »
Armstrong, G. (1999) Trends in Infectious Disease Mortality in the United States During the 20th Century. JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, 281(1), 61-66. DOI: 10.1001/jama.281.1.61
- March 13, 2010
- 06:10 AM
- 35 views
On emerging viruses
by iayork in Mystery Rays from Outer Space
Investigators face a daunting black box with emerging viruses: the challenge of developing a universal therapeutic agent to combat a genetically proficient virus that quite likely has many more options for emergence than we have yet considered.
–Graham, R., & Baric, R. (2009). Recombination, Reservoirs, and the Modular Spike: Mechanisms of Coronavirus Cross-Species [...]... Read more »
Graham, R., & Baric, R. (2009) Recombination, Reservoirs, and the Modular Spike: Mechanisms of Coronavirus Cross-Species Transmission. Journal of Virology, 84(7), 3134-3146. DOI: 10.1128/JVI.01394-09
- March 12, 2010
- 06:14 AM
- 20 views
Yellow fever, stasis, and diversification
by iayork in Mystery Rays from Outer Space
“Episode de la fièvre jaune”
By analyzing hepatitis C virus genome sequences, you can trace the virus’s history through its spread by the slave trade, and linked 19th-century health models in different countries to viral spread and transmission. Similarly, by looking at leprosy DNA, you can track its spread along the Silk Road and along [...]... Read more »
Bryant, J., Holmes, E., & Barrett, A. (2007) Out of Africa: A Molecular Perspective on the Introduction of Yellow Fever Virus into the Americas. PLoS Pathogens, 3(5). DOI: 10.1371/journal.ppat.0030075
Barrett, A., & Higgs, S. (2007) Yellow Fever: A Disease that Has Yet to be Conquered. Annual Review of Entomology, 52(1), 209-229. DOI: 10.1146/annurev.ento.52.110405.091454
Sall, A., Faye, O., Diallo, M., Firth, C., Kitchen, A., & Holmes, E. (2009) Yellow Fever Virus Exhibits Slower Evolutionary Dynamics than Dengue Virus. Journal of Virology, 84(2), 765-772. DOI: 10.1128/JVI.01738-09
- March 10, 2010
- 06:15 AM
- 35 views
Vaccinia virus in Brazil: What a long, strange trip
by iayork in Mystery Rays from Outer Space
Krishna, milking a cow
Vaccinia virus is a widespread virus whose natural host remains unknown. It turns out to be pretty good at jumping across species.
Vaccinia, of course, is the vaccine against smallpox. Even though smallpox is eliminated in the wild,1 vaccinia is still very widely used in research and even, to some extent, in [...]... Read more »
Moussatché N, Damaso CR, & McFadden G. (2008) When good vaccines go wild: Feral Orthopoxvirus in developing countries and beyond. Journal of infection in developing countries, 2(3), 156-73. PMID: 19738346
Alzhanova, D., Edwards, D., Hammarlund, E., Scholz, I., Horst, D., Wagner, M., Upton, C., Wiertz, E., Slifka, M., & Früh, K. (2009) Cowpox Virus Inhibits the Transporter Associated with Antigen Processing to Evade T Cell Recognition. Cell Host , 6(5), 433-445. DOI: 10.1016/j.chom.2009.09.013
Essbauer, S., Pfeffer, M., & Meyer, H. (2010) Zoonotic poxviruses☆. Veterinary Microbiology, 140(3-4), 229-236. DOI: 10.1016/j.vetmic.2009.08.026
DRUMOND, B., LEITE, J., DAFONSECA, F., BONJARDIM, C., FERREIRA, P., & KROON, E. (2008) Brazilian Vaccinia virus strains are genetically divergent and differ from the Lister vaccine strain. Microbes and Infection, 10(2), 185-197. DOI: 10.1016/j.micinf.2007.11.005
Abrahão, J., Guedes, M., Trindade, G., Fonseca, F., Campos, R., Mota, B., Lobato, Z., Silva-Fernandes, A., Rodrigues, G., Lima, L.... (2009) One More Piece in the VACV Ecological Puzzle: Could Peridomestic Rodents Be the Link between Wildlife and Bovine Vaccinia Outbreaks in Brazil?. PLoS ONE, 4(10). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0007428
- March 4, 2010
- 06:15 AM
- 41 views
Blowing out the candles
by iayork in Mystery Rays from Outer Space
Our cells die all the time, in vast numbers. Cells are programmed to die when all kinds of things happen: They may have reached the end of their productive life (as with cells of the gut or skin); they may detect damage to their DNA (as in cancer); or they may have detected viral infection. [...]... Read more »
Bhola, P., Mattheyses, A., & Simon, S. (2009) Spatial and Temporal Dynamics of Mitochondrial Membrane Permeability Waves during Apoptosis. Biophysical Journal, 97(8), 2222-2231. DOI: 10.1016/j.bpj.2009.07.056
- March 2, 2010
- 06:15 AM
- 31 views
Frogs and jumping viruses
by iayork in Mystery Rays from Outer Space
“Batrachia”, by Ernst Haeckel
(Kunstformen der Natur, 1904)
There’s a constant viral assault on us humans, as there is on just about all other species. We as a species have to contend not only with the vast pool of human pathogens, those viruses that constantly circulate among humanity; but also with the continual probes on our defenses [...]... Read more »
Jancovich, J., Bremont, M., Touchman, J., & Jacobs, B. (2009) Evidence for Multiple Recent Host Species Shifts among the Ranaviruses (Family Iridoviridae). Journal of Virology, 84(6), 2636-2647. DOI: 10.1128/JVI.01991-09
- February 24, 2010
- 06:15 AM
- 62 views
The deadliest, most awe-inspiring of the plagues
by iayork in Mystery Rays from Outer Space
Most of us don’t think much about yellow fever nowadays. There are still a couple hundred thousand cases, and some 30,000 deaths, each year, but almost none are in the first world. Out of sight, out of mind.
But this indifference is new. Until the beginning of the 20th century, yellow fever ran rampant, and [...]... Read more »
C. Finlay. (1881) El mosquito hipoteticamente considerado como agente de trasmislon de la flebre amarllla. An. de la Real Academia de ciencias med. de la Habana, 147-169. info:/
- February 22, 2010
- 06:15 AM
- 61 views
Rabbits, virulence, history, and connections
by iayork in Mystery Rays from Outer Space
Man chasing rabbit
(From “Fliegende Blätter”, Munich, 1889)
Everyone knows about rabbits in Australia. Introduced in the mid-1800s, they multiplied ridiculously and are their way across the country, leaving barren devastation behind them.
Myxomavirus, a poxvirus that originated in South America, was introduced in the early 1950s and temporarily controlled the rabbit population, cutting their numbers [...]... Read more »
Kerr, P., Kitchen, A., & Holmes, E. (2009) Origin and Phylodynamics of Rabbit Hemorrhagic Disease Virus. Journal of Virology, 83(23), 12129-12138. DOI: 10.1128/JVI.01523-09
- February 13, 2010
- 12:15 PM
- 100 views
How many Americans are immune to H1N1?
by iayork in Mystery Rays from Outer Space
I’ve been expecting a resurgence of swine-origin influenza virus (SOIV) in North America for a while now, and it hasn’t happened. The virus is still out there, still infecting a few thousand people per week, but there hasn’t been a third large-scale wave of virus transmission. That’s different from the 1918 and 1957 [...]... Read more »
Hancock, K., Veguilla, V., Lu, X., Zhong, W., Butler, E., Sun, H., Liu, F., Dong, L., DeVos, J., Gargiullo, P.... (2009) Cross-Reactive Antibody Responses to the 2009 Pandemic H1N1 Influenza Virus. New England Journal of Medicine, 361(20), 1945-1952. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa0906453
Miller, E., Hoschler, K., Hardelid, P., Stanford, E., Andrews, N., & Zambon, M. (2010) Incidence of 2009 pandemic influenza A H1N1 infection in England: a cross-sectional serological study. The Lancet. DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(09)62126-7
- February 12, 2010
- 09:58 AM
- 93 views
Leprosy and the Silk Road
by iayork in Mystery Rays from Outer Space
Leprosy is a fascinating disease for many reasons. Historical, because, well, it’s leprosy. Genetic, because the bacterium is apparently derived from a single clone that infected humans some 4000 years ago,1 and that has undergone “massive gene decay” in the process of becoming an obligate pathogen:
Thus, since diverging from the last common mycobacterial ancestor, the [...]... Read more »
Monot, M. (2005) On the Origin of Leprosy. Science, 308(5724), 1040-1042. DOI: 10.1126/science/1109759
Cole, S., Eiglmeier, K., Parkhill, J., James, K., Thomson, N., Wheeler, P., Honoré, N., Garnier, T., Churcher, C., Harris, D.... (2001) Massive gene decay in the leprosy bacillus. Nature, 409(6823), 1007-1011. DOI: 10.1038/35059006
Monot, M., Honoré, N., Garnier, T., Zidane, N., Sherafi, D., Paniz-Mondolfi, A., Matsuoka, M., Taylor, G., Donoghue, H., Bouwman, A.... (2009) Comparative genomic and phylogeographic analysis of Mycobacterium leprae. Nature Genetics, 41(12), 1282-1289. DOI: 10.1038/ng.477
- February 10, 2010
- 06:15 AM
- 81 views
A scarifying story
by iayork in Mystery Rays from Outer Space
Sopona, the Yoruba god of smallpox
A while ago I listed a number of reasons why smallpox was eradicated, whereas other diseases haven’t been (yet). One of the reasons was that the vaccine against smallpox1 is so effective. Vaccinia immunization induces immunity for an extraordinarily long time — memory immune responses have been shown for [...]... Read more »
Liu, L., Zhong, Q., Tian, T., Dubin, K., Athale, S., & Kupper, T. (2010) Epidermal injury and infection during poxvirus immunization is crucial for the generation of highly protective T cell–mediated immunity. Nature Medicine, 16(2), 224-227. DOI: 10.1038/nm.2078
MAHNKE, K., JOHNSON, T., RING, S., & ENK, A. (2007) Tolerogenic dendritic cells and regulatory T cells: A two-way relationship. Journal of Dermatological Science, 46(3), 159-167. DOI: 10.1016/j.jdermsci.2007.03.002
Roukens, A., Vossen, A., Bredenbeek, P., van Dissel, J., & Visser, L. (2008) Intradermally Administered Yellow Fever Vaccine at Reduced Dose Induces a Protective Immune Response: A Randomized Controlled Non-Inferiority Trial. PLoS ONE, 3(4). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0001993
- February 5, 2010
- 09:28 AM
- 90 views
On the magic bullet virus
by iayork in Mystery Rays from Outer Space
Vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV), like the related rabies virus, is a bullet-shaped virus. Hong Zhou has just added VSV to his collection of cryo-electron microscopy virion structures,1 and as always with viruses, it’s just gorgeous.
“Architecture of the VSV virion. … A montage model of the tip and the cryo-EM map of the [...]... Read more »
Peng Ge, Jun Tsao, Stan Schein, Todd J. Green, Ming Luo, & Hong Zhou. (2010) Cryo-EM Model of the Bullet-Shaped Vesicular Stomatitis Virus. Science, 327(5966), 689-693. info:/10.1126/science.1181766
- February 3, 2010
- 06:15 AM
- 87 views
Tumors as ecosystems
by iayork in Mystery Rays from Outer Space
Clonal evolution during in situ to invasive breast carcinoma progression1
What’s a tumor?
In some ways, that’s a bad question (never mind the answer) because it implies that a tumor is a single thing. But we know that’s not true. A tumor, by the time we can detect it, is a collection of many cells, [...]... Read more »
Park, S., Gönen, M., Kim, H., Michor, F., & Polyak, K. (2010) Cellular and genetic diversity in the progression of in situ human breast carcinomas to an invasive phenotype. Journal of Clinical Investigation. DOI: 10.1172/JCI40724
- February 1, 2010
- 07:34 AM
- 103 views
Virus discovery by jigsaw puzzle
by iayork in Mystery Rays from Outer Space
Every so often — not often enough — I run across a paper that’s so ridiculously ingenious that it just makes me laugh with pleasure.
Ladies and gentlemen, a round of applause, please, to Shou-Wei Ding, of the Center for Plant Cell Biology at UC Riverside, for his Rube Goldberg-esque brilliant technique for identifying new viruses. [...]... Read more »
Wu, Q., Luo, Y., Lu, R., Lau, N., Lai, E., Li, W., & Ding, S. (2010) Virus discovery by deep sequencing and assembly of virus-derived small silencing RNAs. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(4), 1606-1611. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0911353107
Kreuze, J., Perez, A., Untiveros, M., Quispe, D., Fuentes, S., Barker, I., & Simon, R. (2009) Complete viral genome sequence and discovery of novel viruses by deep sequencing of small RNAs: A generic method for diagnosis, discovery and sequencing of viruses. Virology, 388(1), 1-7. DOI: 10.1016/j.virol.2009.03.024
- January 30, 2010
- 08:44 AM
- 105 views
On simple solutions
by iayork in Mystery Rays from Outer Space
I didn’t post anything about the recent study1 showing that handwashing + face masks reduces influenza spread, because other blogs covered it fairly extensively (for example, here’s Avian Flu Diary’s commentary). Here’s another study giving a common-sense check:
… in a household setting, simple, readily available products such as 1% bleach, 10% vinegar and 0.01% [...]... Read more »
Greatorex, J., Page, R., Curran, M., Digard, P., Enstone, J., Wreghitt, T., Powell, P., Sexton, D., Vivancos, R., & Nguyen-Van-Tam, J. (2010) Effectiveness of Common Household Cleaning Agents in Reducing the Viability of Human Influenza A/H1N1. PLoS ONE, 5(2). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0008987
Aiello, A., Murray, G., Perez, V., Coulborn, R., Davis, B., Uddin, M., Shay, D., Waterman, S., & Monto, A. (2010) Mask Use, Hand Hygiene, and Seasonal Influenza‐Like Illness among Young Adults: A Randomized Intervention Trial. The Journal of Infectious Diseases, 201(4), 491-498. DOI: 10.1086/650396
- January 29, 2010
- 07:31 AM
- 119 views
On destroying smallpox stocks
by iayork in Mystery Rays from Outer Space
Smallpox pustules
(R. Carswell, 1831)
But despite these advances, there is far more that we simply do not understand about smallpox disease or its causative virus. The smallpox vaccine, vaccinia virus, remains the poster-child for human vaccines, but we have only begun to understand how vaccinia-induced immune responses protect vaccinees from orthopoxvirus infections. … In contrast, we [...]... Read more »
McFadden, G. (2010) Killing a Killer: What Next for Smallpox?. PLoS Pathogens, 6(1). DOI: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1000727
- January 27, 2010
- 06:20 AM
- 102 views
Viral resistance and new functions
by iayork in Mystery Rays from Outer Space
Last week, the Effect Measure blog1 talked about a paper that offered a new way of treating influenza.2 Briefly, the approach is to attack the virus by treating the host cell: Eliminating host functions that the virus requires, but that the host cell does not.
The authors of the paper commented that “targeting host cell [...]... Read more »
Karlas, A., Machuy, N., Shin, Y., Pleissner, K., Artarini, A., Heuer, D., Becker, D., Khalil, H., Ogilvie, L., Hess, S.... (2010) Genome-wide RNAi screen identifies human host factors crucial for influenza virus replication. Nature. DOI: 10.1038/nature08760
HACHE, G., SHINDO, K., ALBIN, J., & HARRIS, R. (2008) Evolution of HIV-1 Isolates that Use a Novel Vif-Independent Mechanism to Resist Restriction by Human APOBEC3G. Current Biology, 18(11), 819-824. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2008.04.073
- January 22, 2010
- 06:16 AM
- 101 views
A flood of DRiPs
by iayork in Mystery Rays from Outer Space
“Untitled (Green Silver)” – Jackson Pollock
In the past few weeks not only did I post a short update on the DRiPs hypothesis here, but coincidentally a bunch of papers on DRiPs have also been published. I’ll probably cover some of these in more detail at some point, but here are some of the recent papers [...]... Read more »
Cardinaud, S., Starck, S., Chandra, P., & Shastri, N. (2010) The Synthesis of Truncated Polypeptides for Immune Surveillance and Viral Evasion. PLoS ONE, 5(1). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0008692
Berger, C., Carlson, J., Brumme, C., Hartman, K., Brumme, Z., Henry, L., Rosato, P., Piechocka-Trocha, A., Brockman, M., Harrigan, P.... (2010) Viral adaptation to immune selection pressure by HLA class I-restricted CTL responses targeting epitopes in HIV frameshift sequences. Journal of Experimental Medicine, 207(1), 61-75. DOI: 10.1084/jem.20091808
Bansal, A., Carlson, J., Yan, J., Akinsiku, O., Schaefer, M., Sabbaj, S., Bet, A., Levy, D., Heath, S., Tang, J.... (2010) CD8 T cell response and evolutionary pressure to HIV-1 cryptic epitopes derived from antisense transcription. Journal of Experimental Medicine, 207(1), 51-59. DOI: 10.1084/jem.20092060
Casartelli, N., Guivel-Benhassine, F., Bouziat, R., Brandler, S., Schwartz, O., & Moris, A. (2009) The antiviral factor APOBEC3G improves CTL recognition of cultured HIV-infected T cells. Journal of Experimental Medicine, 207(1), 39-49. DOI: 10.1084/jem.20091933
- January 15, 2010
- 09:29 AM
- 143 views
I’ll see your bornaviruses, and raise with a poxvirus
by iayork in Mystery Rays from Outer Space
There’s been recent excitement over the discovery of bornaviruses fixed in the human genome1, 2. Exciting and unexpected as that is, as usual, the insects are way ahead of us. The genome of a parasitoid wasp has poxvirus sequences in it!
Detecting ancient lateral transfers is more problematic. By examining protein domain arrangements in Nasonia relative [...]... Read more »
, ., Werren, J., Richards, S., Desjardins, C., Niehuis, O., Gadau, J., Colbourne, J., Beukeboom, L., Desplan, C., Elsik, C.... (2010) Functional and Evolutionary Insights from the Genomes of Three Parasitoid Nasonia Species. Science, 327(5963), 343-348. DOI: 10.1126/science.1178028
- January 13, 2010
- 06:15 AM
- 123 views
How is avian influenza evolving?
by iayork in Mystery Rays from Outer Space
Geographic distribution of H5N1 highly pathogenic avian
influenza viruses (HPAIVs) used in this study. Darkened
provinces indicate locations of virus isolation.
“We found several patterns that suggest one general model of evolution in this viral system: 1) within regions, viral mixing in poultry moves toward heterogeneity and the emergence of local types; 2) differentiation was centered around [...]... Read more »
Carrel, M., Emch, M., Jobe, R., Moody, A., & Wan, X. (2010) Spatiotemporal Structure of Molecular Evolution of H5N1 Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza Viruses in Vietnam. PLoS ONE, 5(1). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0008631
topics
join us!
Do you write about peer-reviewed research in your blog? Use ResearchBlogging.org to make it easy for your readers — and others from around the world — to find your serious posts about academic research.
If you don't have a blog, you can still use our site to learn about fascinating developments in cutting-edge research from around the world.
News
Editor's selections: corporate water abuse, vanishing audiophiles, artificial coffee smelling and 60k-year-old canteens
Editor's Selections: An asteroid killed the dinosaurs, innate immunity and obesity, and vaccinia virus in Brazil
Exploitation Nation: Cheating Microbes, Parasites, and Your Colon
