Skip to main content

Home/ WSU Virology/ Contents contributed and discussions participated by Sarah Muncy

Contents contributed and discussions participated by Sarah Muncy

Sarah Muncy

Koala pandemic genetics: Viruses have inserted themselves into the human genome 31 time... - 1 views

  • And in future generations, those genes will gradually mutate and lose their ability to make new viruses. Eventually, the koala retrovirus will become extinct. All that will remain will be its imprisoned DNA.
    • Sarah Muncy
       
      Wow- they seem pretty confident in what will happen, what mutations will take place and what their effects will be. Hmm.
  • In many koalas, the virus’ genes aren’t present just in the immune cells. The koalas carry the virus genes in every cell of their bodies, from their vestigial tails to their snub noses and in every organ in between
    • Sarah Muncy
       
      Wait, so if the virus can infect EVERY kind of cell, it must either have lots of receptors or a wide range of receptor specificity, right? If it's THAT much of a generalist, then surely it must be infectious to other organisms- or at least capable of entry. Does that mean it's at risk for spread in other mammals?
  • Koalas had long been known to have terrible health
    • Sarah Muncy
       
      I've never heard of a wild animal population having "terrible health." That's something you hear about in pure-bred populations, such as with pure bred dogs. If they have notoriously poor health, why do they exist?
Sarah Muncy

A Breakthrough Against Leukemia Using Altered T-Cells - NYTimes.com - 1 views

  •  
    That's so funny- I just saw the update email and Dr. Finnerty also saw this topic (a different article) and posted it, too!)
Sarah Muncy

The HIV Virus: A Possible Cure for Leukemia? | Yahoo! Health - 0 views

  • It's important to note that the T-cells are removed from the patient before being bioengineered with the HIV virus
    • Sarah Muncy
       
      Why is it important to note that the disabled virus isn't injected into the patient? It's function isn't like chemotherapy at all- why even make the comparison?
    • Sarah Muncy
       
      Is there some reason they use T cells only? Are they trying to target T cells, but not dendritic cells or macrophages?
  • therapies that involve the reprogramming of a patient’s immune system, may also eventually be used to fight cancerous breast and prostate tumors.
    • Sarah Muncy
       
      What about lupus, or even allergies for that matter?
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Within hours
    • Sarah Muncy
       
      Within hours?!
  •  
    Whoa. If someone is doing HIV- this may be helpful. The virus is being used as a delivery device for genetics to reprogram lymphocytes. They're like biological nanorobots.
Sarah Muncy

4 more cases of new SARS-like virus confirmed - World - CBC News - 0 views

  • Two men in a single household fell ill and tested positive for the virus. One of the two died. Two other members of the same household were sick at the same time with similar symptoms; one of those men died as well.
  • It's not clear what kind of testing has been done. In fact, very little information about the cases has been revealed
  • is not known at this point whether the viruses jumped directly from bats to people — say through exposure to bat guano or urine — or from bats to other animals and then to humans.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The WHO said as of Friday there have been six confirmed cases of the infection
    • Sarah Muncy
       
      I've had pneumonia several times in my life and no one has ever tested me for a viral type. When do cases get "reported?" Is it only when a person nearly dies?
  •  
    uh oh. The Hajj is a big time Islamic get-together, and was at the end of October. What a great opportunity to move a virus around, and for it to also escape detection in all the masses of people!
Sarah Muncy

Press Announcements > FDA approves first seasonal influenza vaccine manufactured using ... - 1 views

    • Sarah Muncy
       
      Is the big deal here that it's using non-egg technology (which means people with egg allergies can use it) or that it's over 80% effective? Other figures were around 40% effective, if I am remembering it correctly. Maybe the big story is both?
Sarah Muncy

EBSCOhost: What Makes Each Brain Unique - 0 views

    • Sarah Muncy
       
      Can a virus hi-jack this system to get the cell to do reverse transcription?
  • it first transcribes itself into single-stranded RNA, which then travels from the nucleus to the cytoplasm, where it serves as a template for constructing proteins specified by some parts of the L1 DNA
  • because it, unlike other mobile elements in humans, encodes its own machinery for spreading copies of itself far and wide in the cellular genome.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Such reverse transcription
Sarah Muncy

Reassessing Flu Shots as the Season Draws Near - NYTimes.com - 3 views

    • Sarah Muncy
       
      Whaaa? Wait, what? That's like selling elephant insurance. Sure, we can't PROVE it's working, but that doesn't mean it's NOT. Is this true? I never imagined data wasn't there to show vaccines work to this degree- I'm so confused.
Sarah Muncy

New Infection, Not Relapse, Brings Back Symptoms of Lyme Disease, Study Finds - NYTimes... - 4 views

    • Sarah Muncy
       
      But why are the patient so susceptible to getting the infections over and over again?
Sarah Muncy

A virus so large it gets viruses | Ars Technica - 1 views

    • Sarah Muncy
       
      Fortunately?
  • The authors conclude that it probably steals CroV's copying machinery for making more Maviruses
  • which don't appear to do anything
  • ...2 more annotations...
    • Sarah Muncy
       
      What an arrogant writing snafu- why not write, "whose function we can't figure out yet." If it takes energy, surely there's a reason.
  • The Mavirus helps protect cells from CroV,
Sarah Muncy

ScienceDirect.com - Vaccine - Intranasal and intramuscular immunization with Baculoviru... - 0 views

  • An anti-malarial transmission-blocking vaccine (TBV) that prevents fertilization and/or ookinete/oocyst development within the mosquito is an attractive strategy to limit the transmission of malaria
  • The present study used this system to generate a Plasmodium vivax transmission-blocking immunogen (AcNPV-Dual-Pvs25).
  • Plasmodium vivax
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • A variety of expression vectors (e.g., Escherichia coli, Pichia pastoris and DNA) have been used to express Pvs25 protein which has been administered alone or in combination with adjuvants
  • To date these studies suggest that the recombinant protein currently requires both not only linear, but conformation dependent epitopes, and a strong adjuvant to induce transmission-blocking antibodies.
  • Intranasal and intramuscular immunization with Baculovirus Dual Expression System-based Pvs25 vaccine substantially blocks Plasmodium vivax transmission
  • Recently, we have developed a new vaccine vector system based on the baculovirus Autographa californica nucleopolyhedrosis virus (AcNPV) termed the “Baculovirus Dual Expression System”, which drives expression of vaccine candidate antigens by a dual promoter that consists of tandemly arranged baculovirus-derived polyhedrin and mammalian-derived CMV promoters. It has been shown that AcNPV, an enveloped double-stranded DNA virus that naturally infects insects, possesses strong adjuvant properties that can activate dendritic cell-mediated innate immunity
  • Mucosal vaccines have several attractive features compared with parenteral vaccines (e.g., safety, cost-effectiveness and ease of administration), but studies on their use have been limited almost exclusively to protection against mucosally transmitted pathogens. We provide evidence that i.n. immunization is a feasible alternative for preventing malaria, which is transmitted through non-mucosal routes
  • These results are consistent with our previous work showing that intranasal immunization with the baculovirus-based vaccine induced strong systemic humoral immune responses with high titres of antigen-specific antibodies and conferred complete protection against malaria blood-stage challenge
  • which can induce immunological memory against heterologous antigens in a rodent model; however, it is precluded from clinical use due to its enterotoxicity and potential hazardous effects on olfactory nerves [22]. In contrast, a baculovirus-based delivery system may offer an attractive immunization method, as AcNPV exhibits low cytotoxicity and is incapable of replication in mammalian cells
  • The data described here adds to previously presented data showing the significant potential of the baculovirus dual expression system against the blood stages of the parasite
  • but also demonstrates clearly its ability to induce antibodies against the ookinete surface protein Pvs25, and to elicit a transmission-blocking immune response against the P. vivax isolates from endemic areas, and a transgenic rodent malaria parasite model in preliminary studies.
  • One was SMFA on peripheral blood from P. vivax infected patients.
  •  
    Reference paper #2. Gave me information on malaria and baculoviruses.
Sarah Muncy

ScienceDirect.com - Journal of Bioscience and Bioengineering - Efficient production of ... - 0 views

  •  
    This article about baculoviruses goes into how not only can baculoviruses make simple proteins, or express angitens of forgein substances, they can also make pieces of antibodies!
Sarah Muncy

ScienceDirect.com - Vaccine - Hemagglutinin Displayed Baculovirus Protects Against High... - 0 views

    • Sarah Muncy
       
      So, the baculovirus on TOP of having the H5HA on it, can also get the immune system to kick in better?
  • It is remarkable that low doses (103pfu/mouse) of BVs act as an effective adjuvant [41]. Therefore, reducing BV concentration and elongating vaccination intervals may prevent memory responses to BV administration
  • scanning densitometry
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Foreign immunogens or peptides can be displayed on the envelope of AcMNPV by fusion with the baculovirus major envelope protein gp64
  • Baculoviruses have strong adjuvant activity to promote humoral and cellular immune responses against coadministered antigens, activate dendritic cells maturation, induce the production of cytokines, chemokines, and type I IFNs
  • There are two influenza vaccine approaches licensed in the US; the inactivated, split vaccine and the live-attenuated virus vaccine. Inactivated vaccines can efficiently induce humoral immune responses but generally only poor cellular immune responses.
  • Therefore, influenza HA can be displayed on the surface of baculovirus
  • virus-like particle (VLP)
  • Even though cellular immune responses cannot confer sterilizing immunity, they are able to reduce the severity of infection and lower morbidity and mortality rates [47], and antigen-specific memory T cells are able to rapidly respond to a secondary virus infection [45]. Furthermore, cellular immune responses to the conserved epitopes contained in vaccines may provide cross-protective immunity against different subtypes of influenza virus infection
  • To confirm that each HA was incorporated on the envelope of baculoviruses, supernatants from infected Sf9 cells were used to perform hemagglutination assay
  • Most BV display strategies rely on gp64 protein which is the major envelope protein of baculovirus.
  •  
    This paper gave me a better understanding of some aspects of my focal paper that were unclear. How to test for HA, and how baculoviruses may be adjuvants in addition to expression vectors.
Sarah Muncy

PLOS ONE: Safety and Immunogenicity of H5N1 Influenza Vaccine Based on Baculovirus Surf... - 0 views

  •  
    This paper gives a descriptive about how they were able to make a candidate vaccine for influenza that is really cheap/safe and very effective using Bombyx mori caterpillars as bioreactors to get needed proteins.
Sarah Muncy

High levels of genetic variation within Helicover... [Arch Virol. 2012] - PubMed - NCBI - 0 views

  •  
    Is it that the virus itself has a great deal of genetic diverisity, or is it somehow an emergent property with it and the host organism? Insects are arguably the most diverse organisms on earth, doesn't it seem reasonable to expect baculoviruses to be equally diverse? Even if they're simply diverse because they've evolved (or whatever terms apply to these abiotic "Creatures") together, each one-upping each other as natural selection has operated- it's pretty cool.
Sarah Muncy

Herd immunity: cow virus successfully targeted for extinction | Ars Technica - 1 views

    • Sarah Muncy
       
      I have a hard time feeling glad that an organism (fine, a nucleic acid in a protein capsid that replicates inside hosts and uses their cell machinery to make new component parts) of any kind is gone in the wild. As humans we want to eliminate some parts of nature but not others. Sure there's still these viruses in a lab somewhere, but they are a part of the ecosphere, no? Since we know so little about them, is it wise to think we can eliminate some with no consequences?
Sarah Muncy

A New Tick-Borne Illness, and a Plea to Consider the Insects | Wired Science | Wired.com - 1 views

    • Sarah Muncy
       
      We seldom look at arthropods period- not just in regard to their potential risks. Perhaps if we spent as much time studying their ecology as we should- based on how many species there are (TONS), we'd know more about things that impact us overall.
Sarah Muncy

Association of HIV Diversity and Survival in HIV-Infected Ugandan Infants - 10 views

    • Sarah Muncy
       
      Ha, so again, like an organism. Where a population has a great deal of genetic diversity, there are more traits onto which natural selection can act. The more diverse the HIV is at this given stage means a failure in this case though, as the host dies and cannot transmit the disease. Strange.
1 - 18 of 18
Showing 20 items per page