Today, the 1st of December marks World AIDS day. A day designed to raise awareness of those 37 million people infected with HIV (and the potential for that number to grow) and this year aims to end Isolation, Stigma, and Transmission, under the umbrella of a ‘right to health’. This day is one of 9… Continue reading
We at the CVR were recently visited by retrovirologist Dr Kate Bishop (not that one) from the Francis Crick Institute in the centre of London. Like our own Dr Sam Wilson (not that one), Kate works on restriction factors and retroviruses. After our customary podcast was eaten by some terrifying space monkeys, we’ve instead discussed… Continue reading
Before we reach our third birthday, nearly everybody in the world will have been infected by a virus called respiratory syncytial virus or RSV but most people haven’t even heard of it. While usually symptomless, a minority (2%) of cases in infants and newborn babies are associated with severe disease. One paper recently even tried… Continue reading
Join Andrew Shaw and Connor Bamford – CVR postdocs – for a chat with Professor Jan Rehwinkel from the University of Oxford and MRC Human immunology unit in this recent episode of Contagious Thinking. Following Jan’s recent seminar at the CVR, he talks with the podcast about his lab’s work on understanding how our cells… 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
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 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
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
