As the Northern hemisphere approaches winter and the vaccines are in the process of being given before the annual flu season begins in earnest, the country starts to focus on these mysterious viruses that continue to infect us year on year. But if you look closely at influenza viruses, you’ll realise that there’s an awful lot we… Continue reading →
The 28th of September marked the 10th World Rabies Day, and this year’s theme was “Rabies; Educate. Vaccinate. Eliminate.” While most global efforts aimed at rabies control focus on spread by dogs and other carnivores, the Streicker lab working in the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research, and the Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and… Continue reading →
The fight against the HIV/AIDS pandemic has myriad weapons at its disposal, such as educational tools; cheap and effective diagnostics; and antiviral drugs used to suppress virus replication, stop disease and onward transmission, but one thing that has proven to be very difficult is curing all the people infected who are unable to eliminate the virus. The difficulty here is… Continue reading →
“For many years, if not from the time of the introduction of the Merino sheep into the Colony, there has been prevalent amongst the flocks a disease known as fever. This disease is most prevalent during the summer months, and is very much worse in wet seasons.” That was a quote from the Report of… Continue reading →
In this blog post, Professor Roger Everett, who retired recently from the CVR after decades spent in Glasgow (157 papers published… and counting!), answers some of our pressing questions in a Q and A with Siobhan Petrie, our communications officer. If you like what you read have a listen to the podcast interview with Roger… Continue reading →
Professor Steve Goodbourn, from St George’s, University of London, talks with PhD students Joanna Morrell and Yasmin Parr about his his work on unravelling the biochemical mysteries of how viruses unravel the innate immune system of their hosts. Steve’s work has been integral to our understanding of how some of the most dangerous viruses can infect… Continue reading →
Dr Jens Madsen, Associate Professor in Child Health at the University of Southampton, talks with PhD students Yasmin Parr and Joanna Morrell for episode 8 of Contagious Thinking and tells us all about the mucosal surfactant proteins, the Collectins, that form a crucial innate immune barrier against viruses and other microbes. Jens and his lab… Continue reading →
Dr David Bhella (CVR programme leader) and Dr Ed Hutchinson (MRC research fellow at the CVR) tell us about influenza and its filamentous nature. Even after eighty years of studying them, we still tend to forget what influenza viruses look like. In a paper published this week, the Hutchinson and Bhella labs (together with collaborators… Continue reading →
Is the ebolavirus mutating to become more transmissible in humans? Why was Zika virus able to move across the world so rapidly? Why are some viruses able to spread via aerosols floating in the air? While these may all appear to be very distinct questions, there is one major factor that connects them: the concept… Continue reading →
In our 6th episode, Dr Andrew Shaw, CVR postdoc (and @virusmuser), chats with Professor Dave Evans, (@evanslabuk) a virologist from the University of St Andrews, about bees and their viruses. Dave visited the CVR last year where he talked about his lab’s work on studying the replication and recombination of positive sense RNA viruses, like… Continue reading →
