Marilyn J. Roossinck

This fascinating account of viruses is really informative and interesting. Starting out with an introduction to virology and the basic history of what we know of viruses, the book dives headfirst into discussing 101 different viruses. Each page on a virus starts out the same way, but some of them include a photograph or some other image representing the virus. Let's take the Ebola virus as an example. On the one page is an image from a scanning electron microscope. On the other page facing the picture is a set of information about the virus itself. So it describes the Group, Order, Family, Genus, Genome, Geography, Hosts, Associated Diseases, Transmission, and Vaccine. So for Ebola, the information is all meticulously described. The Group is V or five. The Order is Mononegavirales. The Family is Filoviridae. The Genus is Ebolavirus. The Genome is described as Linear, single component, single-stranded RNA of 19,000 nucleotides, encoding 8 proteins. The Geography is Central Africa and West Africa. The Hosts of the virus are Humans and other primates, possibly bats. Diseases Associated with the Ebola virus are Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever. The mode of Transmission is through Bodily Fluids. There is an experimental DNA vaccine and an experimental recombinant vaccine.

All of this data is at the top of the page with a Mercator Projection of the Earth that shows where the virus is located visually. The main portion of the page is taken up describing the virus in more detail. This particular section talks about the history of Ebola, from when it was first documented in the 1970s to the recent outbreak in 2013-15. This section also talks a bit about the Marburg virus but mentions it only in passing. The final third of the page shows a cross-section of the virus and displays the external view of the virus.

So this book is really packed with information. Further on, the viruses that don't affect humans or the plants they grow lack a vaccine. This makes sense since I won't really lose any sleep over the Cricket Paralysis virus or the Barley Yellow Dwarf virus.

This particular book was obtained from the Library, though I don't think I would mind owning a copy of this since it was so interesting.… (más)

My seven-year-old asked me to check out this book for him at the library. Mostly I thought we'd end up looking at the pictures together, but then I got sucked into reading it. For someone with a degree in environmental microbiology, there was such a lot here that I didn't know!

I ended up taking this book with us on a road trip, and at some point Solomon asked to look at it, then ended up reading to us from the backseat. It was amazing how well he did with the pronunciations, and how interested he was in it.

A lovely book, the pictures are not the half of it! I learned so much. About viruses, evolution, molecular biology... Highly recommended.… (más)