Vincent Racaniello

In 1975 he entered the Ph.D. program in biomedical sciences at the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine of the City University of New York, where his thesis research in the laboratory of Peter Palese focused on influenza viruses.⁠[1]

In 1979 he joined David Baltimore’s laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a postdoctoral fellow to work on poliovirus, and Baltimore suggested he build a full-length DNA copy of the virus’s RNA genome.⁠[2]

In August 1981 he and Baltimore published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reporting the complete nucleotide sequence of the poliovirus type 1 genome obtained from cloned cDNA, with three clones together covering the entire genome.⁠[3]

In July 1981 he transfected the assembled full-length plasmid pVR106 into monkey kidney cells and repeated the experiment on August 12, confirming that the cells produced poliovirus.⁠[2]

The work appeared in Science on November 20, 1981, showing that the cloned virus was still infectious.⁠[4]

In 1982 he joined the Department of Microbiology at Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons and set up a laboratory that over the years studied poliovirus, echovirus, enteroviruses 70 and D68, rhinovirus, Zika virus and hepatitis C virus.⁠[5]

At Columbia his graduate student Cathy Mendelsohn identified PVR, the poliovirus receptor gene later renamed CD155, which when expressed in mouse cells made them susceptible to poliovirus.⁠[6]

In 1990 student Ruibao Ren and colleagues produced transgenic mice carrying the human poliovirus receptor gene; the mice were susceptible to all three poliovirus serotypes and showed clinical symptoms like those in humans and monkeys, serving as a model for studying pathogenesis and assessing oral vaccines.⁠[7]

In 2004 he entered social media with his virology blog, followed by the podcast This Week in Virology, and posted videocasts of his undergraduate virology lectures on iTunes University, with the goal of becoming “Earth’s virology professor.”⁠[5]

In September 2008 he and his Columbia colleague Dickson Despommier recorded the first episode of the podcast This Week in Virology (TWiV), on West Nile virus; the idea had come to him while listening to podcasts on his long commute, as a way to teach virology outside the classroom.⁠[8]

He started the undergraduate course Biology W3310 Virology at Columbia, whose enrolment grew from 45 students in 2009 to 185 in 2013; he said such a course had not been offered there since the 1980s and credited its popularity partly to his social media exposure.⁠[9]

On July 11, 2011, he ended his last mouse colony, including the PVR transgenic line from 1990, saying mouse work had become too costly and no one in his lab still wanted to do it.⁠[6]

In March 2012 he received the Society for General Microbiology’s Peter Wildy Prize for Microbiology Education in Dublin, an annual award for outstanding contributions to microbiology education.⁠[10]

In June 2013 Columbia announced that his 11-week course Virology I: How Viruses Work would start on Coursera on August 1, the university’s fourth massive open online course with Coursera, with a follow-up Virology II: How Viruses Cause Disease planned; nearly 100,000 people had already registered for his virology course on iTunes U.⁠[11]

In 2015 he founded MicrobeTV to house TWiV and other life science podcasts; it later became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with a mission of free science education for everyone.⁠[12]

After the COVID-19 outbreak, TWiV episodes focused almost entirely on SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19; in March 2020 he said each episode had averaged about 15,000 downloads before the pandemic but now exceeded 40,000 and was rising daily, and that much misinformation was being spread on social media by people who were not virologists.⁠[13]

In September 2020 the American Society for Microbiology Press published the fifth edition of the textbook Principles of Virology, which he co-wrote with S. Jane Flint, Glenn F. Rall, Theodora Hatziioannou and Anna Marie Skalka, in two volumes totalling 1,136 pages.⁠[14]

He appeared on episode 216 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, whose description calls him a virologist, immunologist and microbiologist at Columbia; topics included SARS-CoV-2, mRNA vaccines and their safety, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, variants, testing and masks.⁠[15]

On April 15, 2023, TWiV recorded its 1,000th episode live at the Helen Mills Theater in New York with all eight hosts; he said that when they started the podcast they simply wanted to share their passion for virology.⁠[16]

He is Higgins Professor of Microbiology & Immunology at Columbia University Medical Center, and for his contributions to microbiology education he has also received the American Society for Microbiology Award for Education, the Richard C. Ernst Lecture and the American Society for Virology Wolfgang & Patricia Joklik Distinguished Service Award.⁠[1]

Personal website: Public link: https://virology.ws/ (opens in a new window)⁠[15]

X: Public account: https://x.com/profvrr (opens in a new window)⁠[17]

YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry: Public channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/vincentracaniello (opens in a new window)⁠[15]

Columbia University: Official website: https://www.columbia.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[13]

MicrobeTV: Official website: https://www.microbe.tv/ (opens in a new window)⁠[12]