Over the past decades, lentiviral vectors have evolved as a benchmark tool for stable gene transfer into cells with a high replicative potential. Their relatively flexible genome and ability to transduce many forms of nondividing cells, combined with the potential for cell-specific pseudotyping, provides a rich resource for numerous applications in experimental platforms and therapeutic setting...

An estimated 500,000 laboratory workers in the United States are at risk of exposure to infectious agents that cause disease ranging from inapparent to life-threatening infections, but the precise risk to a given worker unknown. The emergence of human immunodeficiency virus and hantavirus, the continuing problem of hepatitis B virus, and the reemergence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis have renewe...

Dioxins is a compound family among persistent organic pollutants toxics produced by industrial wastes. 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzo -p-dioxin (TCDD) is a typical representative of dioxins, which not only exhibits systemic carcinogenicity, teratogenicity, immunotoxicity, hepatotoxicity, endocrine disruption and waste syndrome to humans, but also has effects on physiology and pathology of human ski...

In a small town in the middle of Montana, biologists handle deadly pathogens such as Ebola. Hamilton, with a population of about 4,500, hosts the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ Rocky Mountain Laboratories, one of a few dozen facilities worldwide equipped to deal with disease agents designated the strictest biosafety level 4 (BSL-4). For virologists such as postdoc Darryl...