The Science of Hantavirus
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Show Me The Science with Professor Luke O'Neill. A Newstalk Original Podcast.
Hello, Luke O'Neill here, and welcome to Show Me The Science, my weekly podcast. And thanks very much for requests that come in. You can email me on laoneill, with two L's, at tcd.ie. I'm going through them one by one. I've done two or three recently, and this one is another request. So if you do want to request something, I'll try and do it.
How did the Hantavirus topic get requested and introduced on the podcast?
I'll need to know something about it, obviously, and often feel I'm comfortable with the topic. And especially there's a recent breakthrough. I love doing the latest stuff because... That makes it all the more exciting, I guess. But this week is a request because there I was, unlikely as it may seem, I'm in London City Airport. I'm always travelling and I'm sitting waiting to board and the woman beside me is listening to show me the signs. Now, can you believe the chances of that are very remote? And I noticed it on our phone. And then she looked at me and I thought, you're doing the show. I'm the guy. That was very strange. So we sat there and we had a laugh. And her name is Natalie, Natalie Grzewski.
And we're chatting away. And then she asked me to do one. What I do, the science of Hantavirus. Now, it was around about the time of the Hantavirus outbreak on that Hondias ship. And I was very happy to say, yes, I'll do Hantavirus. I haven't done it before, so... And it's another great example, really, I suppose, of the science of something important. And because I'm an immunologist, I know a bit about it and I've been watching it and I've heard all about it over the last few years. So I'm very happy to do it for Natalie because it's something I really know a lot about. And of course, it has been in the news. But remember, it's just another virus in some ways that's there. And we're very interested in viruses, obviously, because of the dreaded
COVID all those years ago. There are loads of viruses. They keep coming. You know, we know all about the flu and COVID and all kinds of things. And then suddenly, Hantavirus was in the news. So what is it? Well, it's another virus. It's an RNA virus. Now, there's different types of viruses, as I mentioned before. This one is built from RNA, not DNA. Now, many viruses are built from RNA. Flu being a famous one and COVID itself. HIV, they're on the RNA virus family. Other viruses are DNA-based, you know. So, for example, smallpox, that's a DNA virus. Pox viruses are inclined to be DNA. But these ones, the Hantavirus family, are part of the RNA virus family. And a guy called David Baltimore was the scientist, oh, back in the 70s now, who spotted that there were RNA viruses and DNA viruses.
He also spotted that the RNA... That's the genetic information to make the virus. The virus goes into your cell. The RNA gets turned into DNA, an enzyme called reverse transcriptase. And that DNA then integrates into the genome in the case of some of these RNA viruses. And Baltimore won the Nobel Prize because nobody ever thought you'd go from RNA back to DNA. That's called reverse transcription. Usually you go from DNA to RNA. Like when the genes in your cells are all made of DNA and you make RNA and the RNA makes protein. In this case, some of these viruses, they go from RNA back to DNA. And hence the RNA virus family became very, very interesting. It was interesting anyway, because of things like flu, which afflicted us for a long time.
And then, of course, because of COVID-19 more recently, and HIV. They're all very famous viruses. So, hanta is a member of the RNA virus family. That's the first thing. Secondly, where does it live? It lives in rodents. So, like other viruses, like SARS-CoV-2, which began in bats, you very often see these viruses in other species. They're called zoonotic infections because they live in animals. Flu loves chickens. Flu also loves pigs. It does infect humans as well. But very often we see viruses living in animals and then diseases happen when they jump from the animal into the human and the human doesn't like them, overreacts to them and you get disease.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:26
2
How did the Hantavirus topic get requested and introduced on the podcast?
0:26–4:53
3
What kind of virus is Hantavirus and how does RNA-based genetics matter?
4:53–10:57
4
Where does Hantavirus live and how do humans typically get infected?
10:57–15:05