Bat SARS-like coronavirus, influenza and NEIDL: ‘What’s New on Virology Blog?’

On a special segment on the Outbreak News This Week Radio Show Saturday, Nov. 23, I had the opportunity to discuss some of the interesting posts made by Columbia University Microbiology and Immunology Professor, Vincent Racaniello, Ph.D. on the popular website, Virology Blog.

Image/CDC

Racaniello first talked about a post concerning Bat SARS-like coronavirus that infects human cells about a Chinese study showed a virus isolated from a single colony of horseshoe bats was able to infect human cells.

We went on to talk of the unusual finding of  two influenza A strains, H17N10 and H18N11 found in bats from Guatemala and Peru, respectively.

As a virology educator, Racaniello teaches not only in the classroom, but also in a wide variety on online media. One such example is the section on Virology Blog is called Influenza 101.

Influenza 101 is a plethora of educational posting about many aspect of the influenza virus–Structure, Entry into Cells, RNA Synthesis and much, much more. A great resource for any virology, microbiology or biology student.

We also talked about the very interesting This Week in Virology (TWiV)/ American Society for Microbiology collaborative 1-hour video, “Threading the NEIDL”.

In the video documentary, Racaniello and colleagues offer a rarely seen behind-the-scenes view of a biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) at Boston University’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL).

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