Question: have you ever created a realy harmful virus

Alison Graham answered on 13 Jun 2012:

I haven’t I’m afraid! Most of my work has been on bacteria (with a little bit on fungi) so I’ve not done much with viruses. I’ve used viruses that infect bacteria in some of my work but only as tools to move bacterial DNA around, not as a research project in their own right. These are quite tricky to work with – if they escape they can infect all of your bacteria which mean you have to decontaminate the whole lab! Luckily I’ve never done that!