Museum archives hold biological specimens that have been collected over years or even decades. Modern molecular analysis of these collections can reveal information about pathogens and their spread.
Louis Pasteur was a pioneer in chemistry, microbiology, immunology and vaccinology.
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On World Rabies Day – which is also the anniversary of French microbiologist Louis Pasteur’s death – a virologist reflects on the achievements of this visionary scientist.
Our ability to use mathematical modelling is accelerating breakthrough discoveries in health care and biotechnology.
Recovery team members Mark Campbell, Guilherme Pessoa-Amorim and Leon Peto photographed at the Big Data Institute in Oxford.
Photograph: Adam Gasson/UKRI
Two years ago, the Recovery trial transformed COVID treatments around the world with a landmark finding that may have saved a million lives in just nine months
This image shows Ebola virus particles (red) budding from the surface of kidney cell (blue).
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases/Flickr
Kevin Zeng, U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases
Although treatments for Ebola have helped many people overcome this deadly disease, the virus can persist in the brain and cause a lethal relapse.
Security precautions, thoughtful facilities design, careful training and safe lab practices help keep pathogens isolated.
Boston University Photography
The microbiologist who directs the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories at Boston University explains all the biosafety precautions in place that help him feel safer in the lab than out.
Microbes are everywhere – and they aren’t all friendly.
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Scientists get up close and personal with deadly pathogens to give doctors the tools they need to treat people sickened by germs. The key is keeping the researchers – and everyone around them – safe.
Fauci is an accomplished scientist who also excels at connecting with the public.
AP Photo/Cliff Owen
Fauci turns 80 this Dec. 24 – and he’s been on the national stage for decades. Here’s more about his work before COVID-19 and why he was perfectly poised to help the US respond to the pandemic.
Specimens like these at Dublin’s Natural History Museum contain valuable information about the evolution of pathogens and host organisms.
Kieran Guckian/Flickr
Winter is flu season – could it be coronavirus season as well? The research is mixed, but other factors besides temperature and humidity have more to do with the spread of SARS-CoV-2.
Places where lots of animals come into contact can help pathogens move from species to species.
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In the real world, new diseases emerge from complex environments. To learn more about how, scientists set up whole artificial ecosystems in the lab, instead of focusing on just one factor at a time.
Industrial vaccine production has enabled mass vaccination campaigns that have reduced infectious diseases.
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Where do plague bacteria go between outbreaks? Research demonstrates that they can survive and replicate inside amoebae that are widely present in soil and water worldwide.
What can a single person’s flu infection tell you about how the virus changes around the world?
Xue and Bloom
New genetic technologies are letting us look at flu evolution right where it starts: within individual people, while they’re sick.
Medical workers move a woman, who is suspected of having Ebola, upon her arrival at Meioxeiro Hospital, in Vigo, northwestern Spain, 28 October 2015.
SALVADOR SAS (EPA)/ AAP
Cracking genetic responses to the changing environment in Africa would open a new frontier in the drive against rising non-communicable diseases on the continent.
Coral affected by black band disease, Bahamas.
James St. John/Flickr
Infectious diseases are a normal part of ocean ecosystems, just as they are on land. But climate change is altering the oceans in ways that could make marine diseases spread farther and faster.
Two women walk in front of a billboard, which says “Ebola must go. Stopping Ebola is Everybody’s Business” in Monrovia, Liberia, January 15 2015.
UNMEER/Emmanuel Tobey
Along with better strategies to respond to outbreaks in human populations, we need a stronger focus on surveillance in animals to identify infectious diseases before they pose a risk to human health.
Air travel can turn epidemics into pandemics.
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More than 8,000 people have died from Ebola in West Africa since February 2014 and it has spread beyond the three countries initially affected. So, it’s an epidemic, right? Or is it an outbreak? What about…
Associate Member, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Affiliate Associate Professor of Genome Sciences and Microbiology, University of Washington