Tag Archives: virus

Swimming with Viruses

Posted on 21 April 2014 by mmmbitesizescience

You can find viruses everywhere: in the soil, in the clouds and in animals. According to scientists from the University of Oldenburg in Germany, there are also a ridiculous number of viruses buried at sea, in the sediments of the … Continue reading →

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Posted in Bacteria, Ecology, Marine, Microorganisms, Science, Viruses | Tagged archaea, bacteria, bacteriophage, carbon, community, cycle, deep, gyre, ocean, prokaryote, seabed, sediment, tidal, virus | Leave a comment

Clouds of decoy viruses help cure genetic disease

Posted on 19 July 2013 by mmmbitesizescience

The presence of foreign objects, like viruses, in our bloodstream is usually a bad thing. Evolution has created some extremely efficient immune cells that patrol the blood, seeking out material that should not be there, and shutting it down. Sometimes, … Continue reading →

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Posted in Disease, Genetics, Medicine, Microorganisms, Science, Viruses | Tagged AAV, antibodies, coagulation factor IX, courier, decoy, DNA, gene therapy, haemophilia B, shell, virus | Leave a comment

Gene therapy using stem cells prevents inherited diseases

Posted on 17 July 2013 by mmmbitesizescience

Originally written for The Conversation. Genetic traits like a bulbous nose or balding give some people reasons to moan about what they inherited from their parents. But more serious genetic flaws can cause debilitating disease. Now, Italian researchers have come … Continue reading →

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Posted in Disease, Genetics, Medicine, Science | Tagged ARSA, gene therapy, haematopoietic stem cells, metachromatic leukodystrophy, MLD, nerves, virus, WAS, Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome | Leave a comment

24 hours in the life of HIV

Posted on 6 February 2013 by mmmbitesizescience

Human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, only emerged in humans relatively recently, yet already represents a big public health threat. When HIV enters the human body, often through sexual contact or the sharing of needles between drug users, it shows a … Continue reading →

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Posted in Disease, Medicine, Microorganisms, Science, Viruses | Tagged AIDS, CD4+, HIV, human immunodeficiency virus, life cycle, particle, replication, T cell, virus | Leave a comment

What makes the smallpox vaccine so great?

Posted on 19 January 2013 by mmmbitesizescience

Perhaps one of the most incredibly effective vaccines ever used, against smallpox, has completely eradicated a terribly nasty human disease. Yet the way in which vaccinia virus, the live poxvirus contained in the smallpox vaccine, actually orchestrates a protective immune … Continue reading →