Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Dickson Despommier, Rich Condit, Alan Dove, and Welkin Johnson
Welkin joins the TWiV team for a discussion of HIV prophlaxis using vectored antibodies, and the influenza H5N1 virus studies in ferrets that were not redacted.
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Links for this episode:
- Vectored HIV immunoprophylaxis (Nature)
- Vectored immunoprophylaxis – the Movie (YouTube)
- Adeno-associated virus (Wikipedia)
- In vitro evolution of H5N1 towards human receptor specificity (Virology)
- Endogenous viral genes non-essential in chicken (Nature)
- Rates of HIV transmission per coital act (J Inf Dis)
- TWiV on Facebook
- Letters read on TWiV 168
Weekly Science Picks
Welkin – Virtual PI (Nature)
Dickson – Drain the Ocean
Rich – Nova: To the Moon
Alan – Robert Falcon Scott on Twitter and the Terra Nova expedition
Vincent – Hello, Mr. Chips (I, Cringely)
Listener Pick of the Week
Charlotte – And the Band Played On
Send your virology questions and comments (email or mp3 file) to twiv@microbe.tv, or call them in to 908-312-0760. You can also post articles that you would like us to discuss at microbeworld.org and tag them with twiv.
Can someone explain to me why the H5N1 in vitro evolution paper was not blocked by the NSABB but the Fouchier and Kawaoka papers were? Â They evolved a virus that can spread by direct contact and is better than the initial H5N1 at spreading between ferrets by aerosol. Â I wonder if the mutations they find here are the same ones that Fouchier finds. Â Too bad we won’t know since the mutations in Fouchier’s paper will be “redacted” from the published paper. Â I guess if you publish in “Virology” instead of Nature or Science you can get your work published. Â Or if you don’t hype your work and have a PR department pimping out your press releases you are safe from redaction. Â
Since this was done at a CDC lab, I wonder what the CDC’s IBC and IACUC have to say about the approval of Fouchier’s and Kawaoka’s experiments? Â I think this paper should be getting more play as a direct comparison to the redacted ones. Â Thanks for covering it. Â I love the in vitro evolution angle. Â Totally cool tech.
The only reason we could think of for NSABB not redacting this paper is that the virus was not virulent in ferrets, and it didn’t transmit that well. But not having seen the Fouchier paper, it’s hard to compare.
I wonder if anyone got Alan’s reference in the title of this episode to the song from ‘Mary Poppins’.
I guess with only 2 ferrets and 1 becoming positive, we dont know if the positive one was the anomaly or the negative one was.  I do like Welkin’s comments on this weeks TWIV though, that for someone who doesn’t know Flu at all, he could figure out how to do the passage experiments, so anyone else that was paying attention could to!  I guess the NSABB was trying to make a point and draw a line in the sand. Â
I got it. I haven’t listened to this TWiV yet though.
Am I right in thinking that the anti-HIV antibody gene transfer paper did not present any virological measurement of infection in the humanized mice after HIV challenge? Data showed that CD4+ T-cell counts remain stable, but I didn’t see any measurement of HIV viremia or seroconversion in challenged mice. If this is the case, how can we say that infection (rather than pathology) was really prevented?
Certainly did! Great title.