Smallpox vaccines are based on a virus but nobody quite knows where it came from, apparently:
Smallpox vaccines are based on a virus but nobody quite knows where it came from, apparently:
Vaccinia virus is closely related to the virus that causes cowpox; historically the two were often considered to be one and the same. The precise origin of vaccinia virus is unknown due to the lack of record-keeping, as the virus was repeatedly cultivated and passaged in research laboratories for many decades. The most common notion is that vaccinia virus, cowpox virus, and variola virus (the causative agent of smallpox) were all derived from a common ancestral virus. There is also speculation that vaccinia virus was originally isolated from horses, and analysis of DNA from an early (1902) sample of smallpox vaccine showed that it was 99.7% similar to horsepox virus.
Sounds about right. The history of virology tends towards the mysterious because of a lack of reliable records- though there was this counter-example I came across a few years ago about HIV that I...
Sounds about right. The history of virology tends towards the mysterious because of a lack of reliable records- though there was this counter-example I came across a few years ago about HIV that I thought quite fascinating.
On a related note, microbiology never interested me before but I came across this channel and I've gotten slowly fascinated.
Smallpox vaccines are based on a virus but nobody quite knows where it came from, apparently:
Sounds about right. The history of virology tends towards the mysterious because of a lack of reliable records- though there was this counter-example I came across a few years ago about HIV that I thought quite fascinating.