The CVR Presents Research Goes Viral

Season 2 Episode 3: This week we're discussing sepsis, a major complication of infection (from bacteria AND viruses) which can lead to multiple organ failure and death. Following on from the first two episodes in this series, influenza virus in one such infection that can lead to sepsis. The only treatments for sepsis are indirect drugs that target the cause of infection – fine when good drugs are...

Season 2 Episode 2: Today we are discussing another virus everyone is familiar with, especially now the winter season is here, influenza. But today we are changing tack, and bringing some physics into the mix. Joining us (postdocs Shirin Ashraf and Connor Bamford) is Dr. Nicole Robb, from the University of Oxford. Dr. Robb is a virologist, who likes to approach viruses at the single molecule level...

Season 2 Episode 1: Today we’re welcoming a very special guest to Contagious Thinking, Prof Yoshihiro Kawaoka, the 2018 Sir Michael Stoker Prize winner. The Stoker prize is an annual lecture awarded to an influential virologist, chosen by everyone who is not a group leader or PI at the CVR. Previous winners include David Baltimore, Beatrice Hahn and Jon Yewdell, to name only a few. This year’s win...

In the last episode of our current series Jack, Yasmin and Andrew are joined by renowned virologist and Nobel laureate Professor David Baltimore, the 2017 winner of the CVR's Sir Michael Stoker Award, to discuss his career. David and his lab have been involved in key developments in virology such as discovering reverse transcriptase (and therefore retroviruses) and making the first infectious clon...

This week Connor, Jack and Andrew are joined by Professor Ian Goodfellow from the University of Cambridge to hear about his career so far in virology and his recent work in helping stop viruses in Africa including during the recent West African Ebola outbreak. If you like this podcast check out some of our previous content about viruses like ebola virus over at cvrblogs.myportfolio.com. Music: The...

This week Jack and Douglas are joined by Professor Jean-Luc Immler to hear about the immune system of insects, and the value of researching fruit flies. If you like this podcast check out some of our previous content about arboviruses over at cvrblogs.myportfolio.com. Music: The Zeppelin by Blue Dot Sessions (freemusicarchive.org/music/Blue_Dot…_Zeppelin_1908)

This week Jack is joined by Professor Thomas Schulz to hear about the Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus, the most common cause of tumours in men in sub-Saharan Africa, and how herpesviruses mask themselves from our immune systems. If you like this podcast check out some of our previous content about herpesviruses over at cvrblogs.myportfolio.com. Music: The Zeppelin by Blue Dot Sessions (htt...

Join Connor Bamford and Andrew Shaw for this week’s episode where we’re thinking bigger than we have before this series. Think about how influenza virus and similar viruses like varicella zoster virus - or the chickenpox virus- behave on the global scale. In this episode we're joined by Dr Kevin Bakker, a postdoc in the lab of Dr Daniel Streicker here in Glasgow who currently works on how vampire...

This week Jack, Connor and Andrew are joined by Dr Gulsah Gabriel to hear about the barriers influenza virus must overcome to breakinto a cell. These barriers are important for dictating which hosts can be infected by different types of influenza virus. If a strain of virus can overcome barriers in a new host, it can rapidly spread through a population that isn't prepared for it. If you like this...

This week, Jack and Connor are joined by Dr Yohei Yamauchi to hear about how an influenza virus particle is unpacked after breaking into a cell. This is an incredibly important part of the viruses life cycle as all viruses must enter into our cells in order to cause an infection. You can find out more about Yohei’s work over at his lab's website, https://www.yamauchilab.com, or check out some of o...

In the first episode of our new series, Jack is joined by PhD student Bernadeta Dadonaite from the University of Oxford to hear about how the flu virus arranges its genome inside the virus particle. Bernadeta studied the flu genome structure by using a technique called 'SHAPE-Map', which stands for: Selective 2'-hydroxyl acylation analyzed by primer extension - Mutational profiling. This is essent...

CVR Contagious Thinking Episode #24: World AIDS Day with HIV expert Professor David Robertson, PI and head of bioinformatics at the CVR. 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 ‘rig...

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 o...

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...

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 regio...

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 v...

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 th...

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...

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 contribu...

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...

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...

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...

**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 o...

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 Streic...

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 evade...