Why not have them both kept at the most restricted level?
Wikipedia says that the precautions for smallpox are tighter than the Bubonic Plague.
Yet given they are both so dangerous, why not treat them with the same care?
Hi, I am new to virology. I am reading some studies for SARS-CoV-2 infection and neutralizing antibodies using recombinant pseudotyped VSV with spike proteins. My question is what makes pseudotyping suitable for biosafety level 2.
An article that described the method to generate pseudotyped VSV said that rVSV pseudotypes without G glycoproteins, when plated on susceptible cells, undergo a single cycle of infection. No more explanation why pseudotyped rVSV enables studies on dangerous viruses at biosafety level 2. The rest of the paper is just a long list of steps on how to make rVSV pseudotypes. After reading through this vast amount of detail, I am currently lost, exhausted and still oblivious of what makes rVSV and pseudotypes (in general) suitable for biosafety level 2.
Reddit search on this sub shows that no similar questions to mine have been asked.
Any help is pretty much appreciated~!
When working in lab with samples suspect of COVID-19 what BSL is applied?
Title: "Ensure Bio-Safety! Ministry of Science Requests Tighter Management of Labs and Viruses"
"On Feb 15, 2020, Ministry of Science official introduced guidelines to tighten biosafety at high-level virology/novel-coronavirus/microbiology labs"
Chinese State TV Link: http://m.news.cctv.com/2020/02/15/ARTIZRDL5GbUKOr7jm6IcbAw200215.shtml
Taiwan news link: https://www.ettoday.net/news/20200215/1646413.htm
Whatever you’re doing, wherever you are, STAY AWAY FROM CROWDED AREAS AND DON RESPIRATOR MASKS. You can skip the next three paragraphs if you’re not interested in learning about what we were doing when we fucked up.
I work in a BSL-3 laboratory studying Mycobacterium tuberculosis. We’ve recently isolated a strain of M. tuberculosis which is capable of replicating much faster than its wild type. At first we thought we had somehow contaminated our growth medium, but it had the same unique appearance as M. tuberculosis. So we tested it. It was the real deal, which was extremely exciting.
Normal M. tuberculosis doubles its colony size roughly every day. Painfully slow for performing research. We wanted to understand why this strain is capable of replicating so quickly to see if we could use them in the lab to speed up our experiments. So we extracted some RNA to try to get an idea of what was going on inside them.
Turns out, these guys had almost no growth inhibiting proteins. Normally this would spell a swift death as they quickly deplete their resources and starve, but these smart little bugs were well prepared. I won’t get into bacterial metabolism too much here but they were somehow able to metabolize inorganic nitrogen from the air at an unprecedented rate.
In addition to the lack of growth inhibitors, we also found evidence of bacteriophage infection. What are bacteriophages? They’re viruses that infect bacteria. This, combined with our other findings, led us to the model of a mutated strain of M. tuberculosis that was already capable of producing more vital resources than wild type, being infected with bacteriophage, causing mutations which inhibited the synthesis of growth inhibitors, and even synthesizing protein products that mimic bacterial growth promoters.
While we were celebrating our discovery of the perfect storm of an interaction between our strain and this phage, a literal storm began to rage outside our facility.
The lights went out first. Four seconds later, a clap of thunder. A second after that, the lights came back on, and so did the alarms. My coworker, Mike, and I were still in the lab this whole time, and it was evident that the negative pressure cabinet went down with the power. We immediately followed our protocols and went to our medical team who prescribed us antibiotics. We did everything right, so what could go wrong?
A
... keep reading on reddit ➡
Cough
Hi all,
I’m a recent graduate in biomedical sciences, with specialism in microbiology and molecular biology. My main interests are in bacteriology/virology, and thus I would love to work in a high containment laboratory. I was wondering if anyone knew how you go about getting a job in a level 3/4 biosafety laboratory? Or does anyone know the name of any UK based laboratories that deal with level 3/4 pathogens? Any help would be much appreciated! Many thanks x
