Creating and maintaining a clean, sustainable water supply means delivering drinking water and collecting wastewater while dealing with pathogenic microorganisms and infrastructure challenges. It's not all challenges, however. Two speakers; Sudhir Murthy, PhD, PE, BCEE, Innovation Chief at DC Water, and Kellogg Schwab, PhD, Director of the Johns Hopkins University Water Institute, speak to Microbes After Hours about promising new endeavors in water management as well as issues of water safety.

Speakers:

This Week in Virology, the podcast about viruses, celebrated its 300th episode on Tuesday, August 26, 2014 with a live recording at the Washington, DC headquarters of the American Society for Microbiology. This special episode features the TWiV hosts Vincent Racaniello, Dickson Despommier, Alan Dove, Rich Condit, and Kathy Spindler recording together in person for the first time.

Vincent, Rich, and Kathy and their guests Clodagh and Ron recorded this episode at the 33rd annual meeting of the American Society for Virology at Colorado State University in Ft. Collins, Colorado.

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Rich Condit, and Kathy Spindler

Guests: Clodagh O'Shea and Ron Fouchier

Rich - No sexual transmission of HCV (Am J Gastro) Vincent - Made with code (blog post) Kathy - Beautiful math images (and 50 Visions of Mathematics)

Jon - Advances in Life Sciences winners (YouTube) Dave - Adam Ruben

Have you ever wondered why mozzarella bubbling and stretching between pizza slices is so different from the earthy flavors of blue-veined gorgonzola? The diversity of cheeses we love are created by encouraging and manipulating the growth of specific microbes. The American Society for Microbiology is excited to explore and celebrate the roles microbes play in the production of a variety of cheeses - from milk-gathering to cheese aging.

This video was streamed live from ASM headquarters in Washington, D.C., on June 10, 2014, as part of its Microbes After Hours program.

Presenter's include:

Dr. Rachel Dutton, Harvard UniversityAfter receiving her PhD in Microbiology from Harvard Medical School, Rachel Dutton was awarded a Bauer fellowship at Harvard University to start an independent research group. She combined her passions of microbiology and food into a research program that has the goal of using cheese as a way to understand microbial ecosystems. Cheese is home to a fascinating assortment of microbes; from bacteria, yeasts and molds, to microscopic mites. Work in the Dutton lab involves studying the microbial diversity of cheeses from around the world, and looking at how cheese microbes interact with each other to form communities. Rachel has been a speaker at events such as the World Science Festival, and regularly gives classes to the general public on the science of cheese and other fermented foods. Research from the Dutton lab has been featured in Lucky Peach Magazine, The Mind of a Chef TV series on PBS, EdibleBoston, the Boston Globe, NPR, and the New York Times.

Mateo Kehler, Jasper Hill FarmsMateo Kehler started Jasper Hill Farm with his brother Andy in 2003 where they produce a wide range of cheeses from the milk of their herd of 45 Ayrshire cows. In 2008 they started a new venture, the Cellars at Jasper Hill, a 22,000 square foot underground cheese ripening facility, to lower the barriers to entry for new cheesemakers by maturing, marketing and selling cheeses, managing logistics and administration and providing technical support to local producers. The Cellars at Jasper Hill is committed to developing economic mechanisms to keep the working landscape in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom working, and delivering deliciousness is a core and principle component in this effort. Mateo lives on the farm in Greensboro, VT with his wife Angie and children Reed and Zola.

The American Society for Microbiology hosted a live podcast of This Week in Virology with Vincent Racaniello with co-host Alan Dove that includes guests Paul Duprex, Director of Cell and Tissue Imaging Core, Boston University, National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL), and Julie Pfeiffer, Professor, Associate Professor of Microbiology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

Vincent, Alan, Julie and Paul  talk about their work on the pathogenesis of poliovirus and measles virus.

Links for this episode

Threading the NEIDL (YouTube)

Transmission of measles virus from macaques (J Gen Virol)

Tropism of green measles virus in macaques (J Virol)

Intestinal microbiota promote enteric virus replication (Science)

Bacterial LPS enhances poliovirus stability (Cell Host Micr)

Video of this episode - view below or at YouTube

Weekly Science Picks

Vincent - ASM Live 2014  Alan - I will not follow the herd  Paul - Invisible Threat  Julie - The importance of stupidity in biological research

Listener Pick of the Week

Neil - WEHI movies and VIZBI

Send your virology questions and comments (email or mp3 file) to [email protected]

Don't miss an episode of MicrobeWorld Video. Subscribe for free using iTunes or help support our work by purchasing the MicrobeWorld podcast application for iPhone and Android devices in the iTunes or Android app stores.

Watch highlights from the Cultures Magazine Launch Event held on January 23, 2014 at American Society for Microbiology headquarters in Washington, D.C.  

Cultures is a free, online, open-source publication available for viewing at www.asm.org/cultures.

Watch a live video episode of This Week in Virology (TWiV), a podcast about viruses. Started in September 2008 by Vincent Racaniello, a Higgins Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Columbia University, the goal of the show is to have an accessible discussion about viruses that anyone can understand and enjoy. In Washington, D.C., Racaniello, co-host Condit, and guests Kawaoka and Hruby discuss antivirals against smallpox and influenza viruses H5N1 and H7N9. 

Moderators:

Vincent Racaniello; Columbia Univ. Coll. of Physicians & Surgeons, NY

Richard C. Condit; Univ. of Florida, Gainesville, FL

Panelists:

Yoshihiro Kawaoka; Dept. of Pathobiological Sc., Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, Madison, WI

Dennis Hruby; SIGA Technologies, Inc., Corvallis, OR

Links for this episode

• ASM Biodefense Meeting - http://www.asmbiodefense.org/

• Influenza H5N1 transmission (Virus Res) - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23954580

• Aerosol transmission of H5N1 virus in ferrets (Nature) - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22722205

• Characterization of H7N9 virus from humans (Nature) - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23842494

• ST-246 efficacy in primates (AAC) - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24100494

• Antiviral options for biodefense (Curr Op Virol)

• ST-246 safety in humans (Antimicrob Agents Chemother)

• Gain-of-function experiments (Science) - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23929965

• Letters read on TWiV 270 - http://www.twiv.tv/twiv-270-letters/

Weekly Science Picks

Vincent - Quanta Magazine - https://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/

Rich - Colour is in the eye of the beholder - http://www.boreme.com/posting.php?id=30670#.UufLtBAo7VR

Listener Pick of the Week

Kehau - Beautiful but deadly viruses - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/13/deadly-viruses-beautiful-photos_n_4545309.html

Send your virology questions and comments (email or mp3 file) to [email protected]

Rob Knight studies the diversity of microbial communities. For every person, microbes outnumber human cells by a factor of ten. Rob has found that this large population of microbes differs based on which part of your body they inhabit (head, hands, gut, etc.).

These same microbes vary widely in type from person to person. Unlike the human genome which is 99.9% alike from person to person, people are 80 to 90% different in their microbial make up.

Rob shares what the microbiome project as been able to learn about these variances among the microbes on and in us and how probiotic therapies might be developed to help treat specific issues related to a person's microbiome.

Ecosystem level therapies such as stool transplants that recolonize a person's gut microbiome have shown promising results. The question then is, do we know enough about therapies that alter someone's microbial flora to avoid the same kind of problems that non-native species have wreaked on other natural environments?

Rob also discusses a project he's been working on in Bangladesh which brings powerful computing analysis to scientists who don't have the resources to utilize advanced computing in their research.

Filmed in Vancouver, Canada at the 2012 AAAS meeting.

Sheldon Campbell sings about microbiology. Dr. Campbell teaches microbiology at Yale School of Medicine and he uses music to enhance his lectures. He has one song for every block of lectures he gives on a major topic.

Songs he's written include a song about fungi, tick borne disease, tuberculosis and one that reviews all of microbiology in eight minutes.

Dr. Campbell hasn't done any testing to see if his songs are more effective at getting his message across but he does get the occasional student who says they remembered something on a test because of his music. The students seem to enjoy it, if not at first, "by the end of the course they're singing along."

Dr. Campbell uses his love of music to enhance his teaching because he believes that if you bring something of yourself into your teaching you'll be a much more engaging and effective teacher.

Vincent Racaniello speaks with Professor Harald zur Hausen, recipient of the 2013 Society for General Microbiology Prize Medal for "work that has had a far-reaching impact beyond microbiology."

Professor zur Hausen talks about the beginnings of his work on the human papilloma virus (HPV) starting in 1972 with a group he setup to look at the "isolation and characterization of the viruses in genital warts."

This group would lead to the discovery of HPV 16 and 18 (the leading cause of cervical cancer) amongst many other types.

The discovery of these two particular strains of HPV led to insights into the cancer causing properties of HPV which would result in the production of the HPV vaccine.

Vincent and Professor zur Hausen also discuss other virus related cancers including the possibility that colon cancer is a product of a virus and the application of the HPV vaccine to males as well as females.

Filmed on location in Manchester, England at the 2013 Society for General Microbiology conference.