Sep 22, 2020
How do viruses hijack your body’s cells? Why do they cause
infectious disease in some people and not others, and what can
they teach us about human biology? The COVID-19 situation is
unprecedented, but the research questions it’s triggered aren’t the
first of their kind.
Tune in to discover:
With over 25 years’ worth of research experience on the molecular biology of influenza viruses, Adolfo Garcia-Sastre is both a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Director of the Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute of Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. For Garcia-Sastre, studying viruses is a way of simplifying the study of more complex organisms, including humans.
“Most people think that…viruses are smart, and that they come
with very smart mechanisms…I am one of the few scientists that
believe the opposite; I think that viruses are extremely dumb…they
are just what they are because that’s what they’ve evolved to,” he
says.
He continues by explaining why he’s developed this uncommon
understanding of viruses, hitting on a number of compelling topics
along the way, including viral latency, virus virulence and the
balance between infecting a host and keeping it alive, the transfer
of genetic information in the evolution and adaptation of
infectious viruses, and why he views the question, “Are viruses
alive?” to be one of mere semantics.
Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK