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Rosenfeld Lab Postdoc Opportunity

1:48:00 recording · AUTO · 4 speakers

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Brief overview

Experimental infection proves sunshine virus sickens carpet pythons, and sequence analysis shows zoonotic viruses need no pre-adaptation.

  1. Sunshine virus causes python neurorespiratory diseaseAll six PCR-positive pythons developed progressive neurological signs and brain pathology, while the uninfected controls stayed well.
  2. Signs lag PCR positivity by monthsFour to 14 days to a positive PCR but two and a half to seven months to visible signs, which sets the quarantine period for anyone adding a snake to a collection.
  3. Spillover needs no pre-adaptationAcross five natural outbreaks the stem branch showed no change in selection; only laboratory-passaged viruses such as the 1977 H1N1 carried that signature.
Executive Summary AI
  • Vincent Racaniello, Alan Dove, Brianne Barker and Rich Condit take up a Journal of Virology paper, first author Jane Wesson and senior author Timothy Hindman of Murdoch University in Western Australia, on experimental infection of carpet pythons with sunshine virus, a negative-stranded virus first found after a 2008 outbreak in captive Australian pythons.13:41
  • Pythons inoculated intratracheally or intracoelomically became PCR positive on oral-cloacal swabs and blood four to 14 days later in five of six animals, while python 10 never turned positive and co-housed python 9 took 114 days, showing contact but not airborne transmission.23:55
  • Clinical signs — head tremor, disorientation, convulsive neck twisting, dyspnoea and dysecdysis — only appeared two and a half to seven months after infection and progressed, with hindbrain white-matter lesions and intracytoplasmic inclusions at necropsy, so the authors claim Koch's postulates fulfilled even though no virus came out of the brain.26:57
  • The second paper, in Cell from first author Jennifer Havens and senior author Joel Wertheim at UC San Diego, applied dN/dS and the RELAX framework to 2009 H1N1, the 2013 West African Ebola epidemic, Marburg 2004, mpox 2022, SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2, and found no intensification or relaxation of selection on the stem branch preceding spillover into people.40:41
  • The 1977 H1N1 reemergence, with only 48 base changes from the 1957 strain, served as the positive control and did show the relaxed-selection signature of laboratory cell passage, as did WSN/33, attenuated measles and mumps vaccines and the H5N1 ferret transmission viruses — a signature absent from SARS-CoV-2.1:00:14
Key Quote
“I'm talking, of course, about the Ig Nobel Prizes.”
— Alan Dove7:54
Key Quote
“So now the FDA is another science agency that's headless.”
— Alan Dove12:05
Key Quote
“And in terms of transmission, it does not appear to be airborne.”
— Vincent Racaniello34:34