Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Dickson Despommier, Alan Dove, Rich Condit, and Kathy Spindler

The Masters of the ScienTWIVic Universe discuss a novel poxvirus isolate from an immunosuppressed patient, H1N1 and the gain-of-function debate, and attenuation of dengue virus by recoding the genome.

Links for this episode

Paula Pitha-Rowe (Balt Sun)
Novel poxvirus (CID)
H1N1 and gain-of-function debate (mBio)
Recoding dengue virus genome (PNAS)
Attenuation by dinucleotide frequency change (PNAS)
Codon pair and dinucleotide bias not distinguished (PNAS)
Codon pair deoptimization artefact of CG/UA change (eLife)
Can engineering subdue viral vaccine reversion? (Virus Evol)
Attenuation by a thousand cuts (NEJM)
Image credit
Letters read on TWiV 351

Weekly Science Picks

Alan - Genetic roulette Rich - The Huntington Kathy - Simulated vomiting machine (video) Dickson - Last Cassini Saturn flybyVincent - Decaying Still Life (YouTube)

Listener Pick of the Week

Ken - Cave meterology (Times, Nature)

Send your virology questions and comments to twiv@twiv.tv

TWiV 351: The dengue code