Cvr Podcast Contagious Thinking

Happy Halloween from all at the CVR! About this time last year in 2016 we made an episode of Contagious Thinking (which I encourage you all to have a listen to/see link at the end) about vampire bats and the deadly rabies virus that they can carry and spread across Latin America. Vampire bats can carry the rabies virus and pass it to a person or a farm animal such as a cow when they bite to feed on their blood. If bitten by a rabid bat the infected animal will probably die. Here we talked with Dr Daniel Streicker (a research Fellow who works between the CVR and the Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine in Glasgow) and Julio Benavides, a postdoc in his lab about their recent studies on tracking and predicting how and when vampire bat rabies will move through Peru, from the Amazon in the East to the Pacific Ocean to the West. One point raised in this episode was: what use is a prediction if you don’t act on it? In this latest seasonly-inspired, follow-up episode of the CVR’s

In this episode of Contagious Thinking Elihu and Connor talk with Steve Polyak from the University of Washington in Seattle USA about how some drugs stop viruses from infecting us. In particular we chat about his work on a drug Arbidol that can block many viruses and is actually an over-the-counter medicine in Russia and China. All life lives in a sea of viruses, and some of those viruses can make us sick. Humans have thus developed many ways to stop these rare viruses causing illness. One major important example are vaccines. Another are a class of medicines called antivirals that stop a virus from making new viruses when they get inside our cells. Some of these antivirals can control an infection successfully for the lifetime of an individual, like with HIV and others - like for hepatitis C virus, an important longterm infection - can cure an infection so that there is no more virus in your body. But have you ever wondered what it takes to make antiviral drugs? Steve gives us a glimpse of the work sci

In the latest episode of Contagious Thinking, join CVR PhD student Jack Hirst and postdoc Connor Bamford as they chat with Dr Charles Masembe about his work on some of Africa's most important animal viruses. Charles works currently on a virus called African swine fever virus (ASFV), which causes a deadly disease in domestic pigs that can cause great economic and political turmoil in affected regions. ASFV is a fascinating large DNA virus that is spread by wild pigs and the ticks that feed on them. The virus can move between the wild pigs and farmed domestic pigs. Understanding this movement is a major focus of Charles' work. Charles is a veterinarian and molecular epidemiologist by training and is an associate professor at the College of Natural Sciences at Makerere University in Uganda. He is working in a collaboration with scientists at the CVR to sequence ASFV samples from pigs across Uganda. His work is funded by a recently awarded Wellcome Trust Intermediate Fellowship in Public Health and Tropical M

Welcome to Contagious Thinking, the podcast from the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research. In this episode 20, we’re discussing the respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, a virus which will infect all of us before we’re three years old and can be deadly in the very young or old. Moreover, RSV has a particularly high burden of disease across the developing world. Jack Hirst(influenza virology PhD student in the Hutchinson lab) and Connor Bamford (postdoc in the McLauchlan lab) are joined by Professor Jürgen Schwarze of the University of Edinburgh - following his seminar at the centre, who explains what RSV is, how it could be tricking our immune systems, and why parasitic worms and our gut microbes may hold the key to preventing damage from RSV infections. For information check out the accompanying blog post here: http://cvr.academicblogs.co.uk/our-gut-microbes-and-parasites-are-protecting-us-against-viral-lung-infections/ Picture (An x ray of a child with RSV showing the typical bilateral peri

Every year the CVR's postdocs and students award the 'Sir Michael Stoker award' to a leading scientist in virology who comes to our institute, meets with students and staff and gives a lecture. Past winners include Vincent Racaniello, Peter Piot, Francoise Barre-Sinoussi, Beatrice Hahn with this year's winner being David Baltimore. In 2015, Jon Yewdell was the Stoker prize winner and he came to the CVR and delivered his famous 'How to Succeed in Science Without Really Trying' lecture. We were lucky enough to record it for Contagious Thinking. Listen here to Jon's wisdom and get excited for science again! Picture is (L to R), Joanna Crispell (PhD student), Ben Brennan (postdoc), Jon Yewdell, and Prof John McLauchlan (CVR PI).

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 ‘know’ they have been infected and how they kickstart an immune response that’s going to stop us getting sick. Viruses and other microbes are all around us and some are just waiting to infect and cause disease. Why then don’t we get sick more often? Why – when we do get sick – do we not succumb to disease more often? Why then if we survive that infection are we usually protected from it in the future? The thing that’s helping us out and stopping us from getting sick is our immune system, the amalgamation of defences that millions of years of evolution has gifted us. Most people will recognise antibodies and T cells, the immune responses with memory that are the basis of all of our vaccines.

Every year (it's happening as we speak!)the CVR holds an exciting competition called the "Sir Michael Stoker Award". This prize is unique in that the winner is selected by the junior members of the CVR: the PhD students and Postdocs and is an excellent opportunity to meet our virology idols and all nominees for the prize are established, outstanding virologists who have made a significant contribution to their field. In previous years we have had Mike Malim, Francoise Barre Sinoussi, Vincent Racaniello and Peter Piot. Beatrice Hahn won the 2016 competition and came to the CVR late last year. Professor Beatrice Hahn who is based at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, was 2016's winner of the prize and while she was at the CVR she recorded a podcast with the Contagious Thinking team. Beatrice is most well know for her work on the zoonotic nature of HIV and understanding the origins and evolution of modern human infectious diseases (http://www.pnas.org/content/110/17/6613.full). Her

Find out more about Morbilliviruses and the research involving them at the CVR, in this latest episode of the Contagious Thinking podcast brought to you by the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research (CVR). Here, Joanna Crispell and Yasmin Parr talk to Dr Brian Willett - Professor of Viral Immunology at the CVR. They discuss his recent publications looking at neutralizing antibodies in many different animals to Morbilliviruses. Brian talks about the surprising finding of neutralizing antibodies against Rinderpest - a virus that has been declared eradicated since 2011. Listen to find out more. For more information, read Brian's lab's recent paper in Vaccine: "Enhanced immunosurveillance for animal morbilliviruses using vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) pseudotypes." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27742221 Edited intro/outro music credit: 'Take me higher' by 'Jahzzar'. http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Jahzzar/Tumbling_Dishes_Like_Old-Mans_Wishes/Take_Me_Higher_1626 (creativecommons.org/licen

Find out what CVR virologists are doing to help fight bacterial antibiotic resistance in the clinic, in this latest episode of the Contagious Thinking podcast brought to you by the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research (CVR). Or you can read about this story on our blog here: http://cvr.academicblogs.co.uk/can-virologists-combat-antibiotic-resistance/ If you listened to this episode of Contagious Thinking, and have a couple of minutes to spare, please fill in this questionnaire about the podcast; https://goo.gl/forms/gWqwGLq5pZjUJcNb2 Here, Josie - our undergraduate honours student - asks, "What can virologists do to combat antibiotic resistance?". To answer this, she talks with Dr Neil Ritchie, an infectious diseases clinician in Glasgow, about the looming, real-world problem that individuals face when the bacterial infections they have are not able to be treated easily with routine antibiotics. Building on this, Josie then speaks with CVR scientists Dr Sema Nickbaksh, a postdoc, and princ

Find out all about the research being carried out at the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research (CVR)into HIV, AIDS and related viruses in this episode of the Contagious Thinking podcast on #WorldAIDSday. Read more on our blog here: http://wp.me/p5DCA6-gP Listen and find out about the HIV/AIDS problem from the clinical, scientific and veterinarian perspective, all from researchers at the CVR. Here, we speak with Dr Emma Thomson [2 minutes 15], a local infectious diseases clinician and researcher within CVR, about the continued clinical challenged that HIV and AIDS poses; Dr Sam Wilson [24 minutes 06], an MRC research fellow whose work in fundamental HIV virology enables us to understand how our cells fight back are immune to infection; and Professor Margaret Hosie [45 minutes 42], whose research into FIV, the feline analogue of HIV, may be able to give us some insight into how we could develop a vaccine for HIV. *** Please fill in this questionnaire about the podcast and how it can be improv

**After listening, please fill in our short questionnaire about your experience https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc5pN8gFrUU9n0v0WRYfMH3y3YwHDyQOBs9k5JK1M8OewMLFQ/viewform ** In preparation for the Northern hemisphere's 'flu season, Josie speaks with the CVR’s Dr Ed Hutchinson – an MRC career development fellow – and Dr Swetha Vijayakrishnan, a postdoc in the group of Dr David Bhella for our latest episode and asks them about a mysterious aspect of influenza biology. Ed and Swetha share a fascination with the reasons why viruses such as influenza and ebola produce very, very long and thin particles and here they tell us about how they're using state-of-the-art proteomic and molecular techniques in combination with advanced 'cryo' electron microscopy to understand the biology of these amazing filamentous structures. Read more on our blog post here: http://cvr.academicblogs.co.uk/freezing-flu-filaments/ Image adapted from Vijayakrishnan et al., 2013 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23754946)

In this episode, join Josie and Connor who talk with Drs Daniel Streicker and Julio Benavides about their work on preventing the spread of vampire bat rabies across Peru. 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 Comparative Medicine at the University of Glasgow, are looking at how the rabies virus is transmitted from blood feeding vampire bats across Latin America. Vampire bats are the major source of rabies in this region and Daniel and Julio hope that by studying closely how the virus interacts with these bats they can establish more effective strategies to prevent rabies transmission, which will aid global efforts to eradicate the virus as a public health concern. If you liked this, read our

In this episode, Connor chats with two CVR scientists, principal investigator and director of the institute, Professor Massimo Palmarini, and PhD student and vet, Eleonora Melzi. Eleonora and Massimo explain to us a bit about their work, which has recently been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. Their paper provides new insights into how bluetongue virus evades the immune response of its host by drastically altering the workings of the lymph node, a critical organ of the immune response. Bluetongue is a very serious infection in sheep and other livestock animals and is an arbovirus, spread by midges. Climate change and global warming are making bluetongue outbreaks more common in Northern Europe and the UK. Find out more at the Contagious Thinking blog: http://cvr.academicblogs.co.uk/architectural-antagonism-by-an-acute-arbovirus/ And read the paper (Open access) here: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/09/23/1610012113.full Image credits from Eleonora Melzi. Th

In this episode, PhD students Joanna Morrell and Yasmin Parr talk with the recently-retired Professor Roger Everett - eminent herpes virologist and resident expert in intrinsic immunity - about his career in science, his time in Glasgow and his love of the great outdoors. If you liked this, read our interview with Roger over at our blog: http://cvr.academicblogs.co.uk/icp0-and-skyewalkerno-this-isnt-an-episode-of-star-wars/ Image credit from Professor Roger Everett. Edited intro/outro music credit: 'Take me higher' by 'Jahzzar'. freemusicarchive.org/music/Jahzzar/…Me_Higher_1626 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).

Professor Steve Goodbourn, from St George's, University of London, talks with PhD students Joanna Morrell and Yasmin Parr about his work on unravelling the biochemical mysteries of how viruses unravel the innate immune system of their hosts. Edited intro/outro music credit: 'Take me higher' by 'Jahzzar'. freemusicarchive.org/music/Jahzzar/…Me_Higher_1626 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Image from: http://nypost.com/2016/04/13/the-citys-tastiest-new-chicken-dish-is-surprisingly-healthy/

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 protein that forms a crucial innate immune barrier against viruses and other microbes. Edited intro/outro music credit: 'Take me higher' by 'Jahzzar'. freemusicarchive.org/music/Jahzzar/…Me_Higher_1626 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).

In our 7th episode, PhD student Yasmin Parr and postdoc Connor Bamford chat with Professor Richard Hardy from Indiana University in the USA about his lab’s work on understanding virus infectivity, a fundamental property of viruses. Richard tells us about the surprising way arboviruses spread from insect to mammalian cells and how by understanding how this happens we may be able to make better and safer vaccines for viruses like chikungunya virus. Image: alphavirus EM structure from http://pdbj.org/emnavi/emnavi_detail.php?id=emdb-5210 Edited intro/outro music credit: 'Take me higher' by 'Jahzzar'. freemusicarchive.org/music/Jahzzar/…Me_Higher_1626 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).

In our 6th episode, Dr Andrew Shaw, CVR postdoc, 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 hepatitis C virus and polio virus. But for the podcast we chose to ask him about his other interest: beekeeping, which he combines with his love of virology in his lab-turned apiary in St Andrews. Listen and find out what kinds of viruses infect bees, what they do their hosts and what scientists and beekeepers, like Dave, are doing to stop them. Image from Dave's beekeeping blog: http://theapiarist.org/blog/ Edited intro/outro music credit: 'Take me higher' by 'Jahzzar'. freemusicarchive.org/music/Jahzzar/…Me_Higher_1626 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).

In episode 5 we talk with Dr Mike Weekes, a clinical consultant and Wellcome Trust Senior Clinical Fellow at the University of Cambridge about his lab’s work on using a technique he pioneered called ‘quantitative temporal viromics’ (which is a kind of proteomics). The Weekes lab uses this method to understand infection by human cytomegalovirus (HCMV – also known as human herpes virus 5) with an overall aim of discovering novel antiviral targets, which are required urgently. Image from Weekes et al., Cell. 2014 Jun 5;157(6):1460-72. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2014.04.028. Edited intro/outro music credit: 'Take me higher' by 'Jahzzar'. freemusicarchive.org/music/Jahzzar/…Me_Higher_1626 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).

In episode 4 we meet four members of the CVR who went to Sierra Leone to help out with the ebola virus epidemic during 2015. Ph.D students Caroline Chauche and Navapon Techakriengkrai along with postdocs Agnieszka Szemiel and Chris Davis all worked in diagnostic labs in the West African country at different times during the outbreak. Here they tell us their story about what it was really like to help out during the peak of the epidemic. Edited intro/outro music credit: 'Take me higher' by 'Jahzzar'. freemusicarchive.org/music/Jahzzar/…Me_Higher_1626 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Picture thanks to Agnieszka Szemiel.