DNV-2 infected mosquito loose in laboratory; bites professor

This happened before my very eyes yesterday!

On Monday, July 14 (Bastille Day - guess the mosquito took its chance at liberty) in the Tulane Department of Tropical Medicine, my mentor, a post-doc and I were feeding A. aegypti mosquitoes Dengue-2 infected blood for an experiment looking at a peptide that has successfully blocked more than 99% infection in Vero cells. While attempting to transfer sedated mosquitoes into their appropriate containers (they had been knocked down in the freezer for 5 min), one feisty mosquito revived quickly and managed to escape. My mentor later found that he had been bitten!

Hopefully the virus had not yet disseminated to the salivary glands since we had just infected the mosquitoes.

The culprit was soon apprehended with a squirt of ethanol.

Hope your summers are all virus free! (I just got over pink eye) I missed you all this spring!

Julia

Summer Virus Alert

Hey guys, I've just been following Pro-Med and saw that there has been another suspected case of Ebola in Boende, DRC. Check that out here: http://fr.allafrica.com/stories/200806231578.html

AND one of our rare Paramyxoviruses has taken the reigns in Australia. Find out about the Hendra virus reports here:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/07/08/2298216.htm>

Hope you're all having a great summer!

Jon