In a world obsessed with the deadly nature of viruses, join us in a celebration of the beauty of their biological structure. Glasgow is a fascinating place to live, with awesome architecture and design emerging from the dramatic Scottish landscape. Although invisibly small, viruses also produce strikingly beautiful structures, constructed from the local materials of… Continue reading
In this episode we talk with Dr Mike Weekes, a clinical consultant and Wellcome Trust Senior Clinical Fellow at the University of Cambridge. Mike visited the CVR a few weeks ago and gave a wonderful seminar about his lab’s work on using a technique he pioneered called ‘quantitative temporal viromics’ (which is a kind of… Continue reading
Before we had Zika virus on our minds there was Ebola. 2015 saw the most devastating human epidemic of ebolavirus ever recorded. This outbreak began in December 2013 in the forests of Guinea and spread rapidly into neighbouring countries of Liberia and Sierra Leone, reaching Nigeria, the USA and even Glasgow, Scotland in the UK.… Continue reading
Here, on World AIDS day, Connor Bamford and Joanna Morrell speak with Dr Clare Jolly, HIV virologist, about her work and her groups work on how HIV spreads from cell-to-cell and what this means for antiviral treatment and vaccination. Clare is a Senior Research Fellow in the Division of Infection & Immunity at University… Continue reading
Here we talk with Professor Mary Collins, immunologist and virologist, about her work on developing viral vector-based gene therapies. Mary is Professor of Immunology in the Division of Infection and Immunity at University College London, the head of the Division of Advanced Therapies at the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control, and the… Continue reading
By Alex Binks. Alex is an MRC-funded Ph.D. student at the University of Glasgow, working with Professor Iain McNeish at the Institute for Cancer Sciences and the Beatson Institute. Alex’s essay, about his research on oncolytic herpesviruses, was runner-up in the MRC Max Perutz Science Writing Competition 2015 and is published below in full with permission from Alex and the MRC.… Continue reading
In our very first podcast, the CVR meets Professor Geoff Smith, FRS FMedSci FIBiol and head of the department of pathology at the University of Cambridge following his recent seminar here in Glasgow, to talk about his work on poxviruses and regulation of the innate immune response.
Knowledge of how cells and organisms defend themselves against pathogenic microbes is of paramount interest in our understanding of infection and immunity. Determining the mechanism by which cells achieve this – and exploiting this knowledge – may aid in the development of therapies as well as improving our understanding of how these microbes cause disease. Shu et al., (from the… Continue reading
As the International Meeting on Arboviruses and their Vectors, kicks off today in Glasgow with the Society for General Microbiology (#IMAV15), we’d like to present to you the fifth and final in a series of posts about arboviruses, their vertebrate hosts and their arthropod vectors. This post, written by Dr Alain Kohl ,CVR Arthropod-borne infections programme leader along with… Continue reading
“While arboviruses do not generally cause recognisable disease in their arthropod vectors they often do in vertebrates, in particular warm-blooded vertebrates like primates like us and livestock. “ As classically defined, arboviruses have both arthropod and non-arthropod hosts. Whilst insects/ticks may have legs, jaws and eyes etc., they are clearly very different to their vertebrate hosts, such as… Continue reading
