Rhett Talks w/ Paul Duprex – Bringing Viruses in from the Cold and Heating them Up!
November 20, 2014
Filmed on November 20, 2014. Lecture by Paul Duprex, the Associate Professor of Microbiology, Director of Cell and Tissue Imaging, National Emerging Infectious Diseases Institute (NEIDL), Boston University School of Medicine.
I am fascinated by viruses! As nature’s nanomachines, they are incredibly diverse and come in more “flavors” than all the plants, animals, fungi, bacteria, and other unicellular organisms on earth put together. Why? Because as the nursery rhyme says, “Big fleas have little fleas, upon their backs to bite ’em, and little fleas have lesser fleas, and so, ad infinitum.” I will discuss why and how pathogen taming scientists bring these invisible, transmissible harbingers of disease in from the wild rather than leave them to their own devices.