I didn’t take biology at school, and I somehow missed some of the most fundamental lessons on the ways in which humans can get sick. I probably couldn’t tell you, for instance, whether any given illness is bacterial or viral, or something in between.
While perusing the recently returned shelf at university some years ago, I came across the book The Hot Zone, which is about the ebola virus. I was fascinated, and stood right there at the shelf reading it. I might have kept reading, except — for those of you who have read it, you will know — that I had just eaten my lunch, and had to ditch it when it got to the part with the black stuff and the lungs and the aeroplane.
I’ve since found my own copy of that book in a second hand shop, but have still not finished it. will never finish it, since it went back to the second hand shop.
Still, I have been stumbling across articles that this delicate disposition can manage, and here are a few of the most interesting things I’ve come across lately.
1. Mammals Made By Viruses, from Discover Magazine, which begins: “If not for a virus, none of us would ever be born.”
2. Big Picture Science – “Going Viral” – a podcast, available via iTunes
Listen to individual segments here:
Part 1: Living With Viruses
Part 2: Mega Virus
Part 3: Are Viruses Alive?
Part 4: Cross-Species Viruses
Part 5: Fossil Viruses
Part 6: Viral Forecasting
Part 7: Viral Culture
In which I started to think a little differently about viruses, after being told that as much as humans would like to think this earth comprises large animals that we can see (most importantly mammals), this earth really belongs to much smaller creatures, and without them we are nothing.
3. Using Viruses To Dye Your Clothes, from io9, in which cloth coloured with viruses could be entirely bleach resistant. I don’t know about you, but I’d have some irrational reluctance to walk around in one great viral garment. For years we’ve been told (by yoghurt companies) that there are ‘good bacteria’ and ‘bad bacteria’, and I anticipate a near future in which public education includes messages about ‘good viruses’ and ‘bad viruses’.
4. Do you know what a retrovirus is? Hint: It’s not made of chrome, and it’s not covered in paisley patterns. I find the most easy-to-understand definition here.
5. The Unexpected Beauty Of Viruses, photographs at The Smithsonian. Gotta admit, they’re prettier than mattress mites. (Do not google that if you plan on sleeping tonight.)
6. The Virus That Learns from National Geographic
7. Meet The Newest Member Of The Immune System: The Nose from Discover
8. The Lurker: How A Virus Hid In Our Genome For Six Million Years from National Geographic
9. Humans Are At least 8% Virus from Discover
