TWiV 195: They did it in the hot tub

August 12, 2012

Boiling Spring LakeHosts: Vincent Racaniello, Alan Dove, Rich Condit, Dickson Despommier, and Ken Stedman

The complete TWiV team meets with Ken Stedman to discuss the discovery in Boiling Spring Lake of a DNA virus with the capsid of an RNA virus.

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Links for this episode:

Weekly Science Picks

Ken – The Edge of Life trailer and Facebook page
Dickson – The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint by Edward Tufte
Alan – SEMs of insects and spiders via Steve Gschmeissner
Rich – Curiosity Has Landed (Wiki mission summary)
 Vincent – Curiosity’s Seven Minutes of Terror (YouTube)

Listener Pick of the Week

Lance - The Vaccine Confidence Project and Immune response video (YouTube)
Anat - Beautiful Science

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  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=19714126 Josh Powell

    It was great to see Ken discuss this extreme virus research with great enthusiasm. With all the human virus talk these days its nice to switch gears and talk about this. I still scratch my head at how a tombusvirus icosahedral capsid (closely realted to the TBSV plant virus capsid) could package a DNA instead of RNA genome such as this and be stable at pH 3.0 at elevated temperatures.  TBSV is considered a “weak” virus with critical cation-stable cites required just to be stable.  These cation sites are also apparently conserved within this virus.

    With all that aside…I’m excited to see how this story unfolds. I would also love to see Ken bring his enthusiasm and be a contributor to your show 2 or 3 times a year. He fits perfectly with you guys and its nice to mix it up with this type of virology :-)