• Question: how did you get in to learning about dangerous viruses infect and provoke our cells to counterattack and destroy the intruder

    Asked by aimeejuiceybrucey to Alison, Artem, Caroline, John, Gunther on 19 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Artem Evdokimov

      Artem Evdokimov answered on 19 Jun 2012:

      What you are asking is the subject of two biological sciences: virology and immunology/cell biology. The first part of the question is relatively easy to answer: if you wish to study viruses and how they interact with cells and organisms, then you should study biology and try to steer your education towards higher and higher levels of learning – very likely you will end up studying for a Doctorate and then doing a postdoc somewhere, followed by research career (academic or in industry – doesn’t really matter).

      If you’re also asking how viruses and cells play an endless game of fitness and survival – that’s a very large question 🙂 There are many types of viruses and a number of very clever ways in which they infect cells – including riding piggyback on other parasites, entering cells by pretending to be important biological components (like messenger proteins), and so on. Once inside viruses have a number of ways to propagate themselves – anything from simply copying their RNA or DNA many times over and making a bunch of proteins and then exploding the host cell from the inside, to becoming a part of cell genome (and possibly never leaving again – our genome is littered with remnants of ancient viruses!). On the opposite end of the game, cells defend against viruses by recognizing viral proteins, RNA and DNA and triggering various forms of response – from immune response (antibodies) to deliberate cell suicide (apoptosis) where an infected cell basically sacrifices itself to save other cells from infection.

      Again, it’s a huge field. Notably not all viruses are ‘bad’ – viruses can also be responsible for transfer of genes from organism to organism (in particular viruses of bacteria) and this is actually ‘good’ from the perspective of diversifying genome (something that usually is a survival benefit in the long term). Some viruses may even protect us from being infected by other viruses (again, many examples of this exist in bacteria).

      Artem

    • Photo: John Short

      John Short answered on 20 Jun 2012:

      I got into learning about viruses quite by accident! Although I always wanted to be a scientist, and wanted to find out how things work, I got into microbiology at secondary school first, learning about how viruses, fungi bacteria and parasites are able to infect and hurt humans. It was at university that I started to specialise in microbiology, where I studied immunology at first. It was then that I decided to study viruses more, mostly because I was amazed at how something so simple and small could have such a devastating impact on us. The actual biology of a virus infection and the immune response is incredible. That’s when I chose to do a PhD in viruses and how they infect us.

      The best way for yourself to get into learning is to first make sure you are interested in the subject and enjoy learning itself. Without that motivation and desire, you won’t go far. The next thing is to make sure you study biology, some chemistry and possibly some maths at school for GCSEs, A-Levels or for highers – that’s what I did. Get some good grades with hard work, and then apply for a microbiology course at university, or choose a biology course where you choose modules in microbiology. Get at least a 2:1 at uni and then you can do a PhD!

Comments