TWiM 285: How plague got deadly

Note. The var­i­ous links in this older post may no longer work.

TWiM re­veals a new type of satel­lite virus that re­quires only phage tails for pro­duc­ing in­fec­tious virus par­ti­cles, and that highly vir­u­lent plague bac­te­ria dif­fers from its in­nocu­ous en­teric pre­de­ces­sor by its re­sis­tance to ly­sis by hu­man com­ple­ment.

Hosts: Vin­cent Racaniello and Michael Schmid

Right click to down­load TWiM #285 (44 MB .mp3, 60 min­utes)

Sub­scribe to TWiM (free) on Ap­ple Pod­casts, Google Pod­casts, Stitcher, An­droid, RSS, or by email.

Be­come a Pa­tron of TWiM!

Links for this episode:

• Viruses that steal bac­te­rio­phage tails (Cell Host Mi­crobe)
• Y. pestis not sus­cep­ti­ble to hu­man com­ple­ment (Appl En­v­i­ron Mi­cro)
• How Y. pestis got its path­o­genic groove (Appl En­v­i­ron Mi­cro)
• Risks of an­other pan­demic (TedEd)

Mu­sic used on TWiM is com­posed and per­formed by Ronald Jen­kees and used with per­mis­sion.

Send your mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy ques­tions and com­ments to twim@microbe.tv