Watch out for this kind of “Crypto” Currency: Cryptosporidium is a parasite that causes diarrheal disease in humans.  Cryptosporidiosis is a common cause of waterborne disease in the U.S., and responsible for serious and potentially fatal infections in HIV positive individuals and malnourished infants.  Dr. Boris Striepen is a Professor of Pathobiology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine.   Dr. Striepen studies Cryptosporidium and how it causes disease.  Dr....

Campylobacter jejuni is a major cause of diarrheal disease in humans. However, C. jejuni is also naturally found in chickens and doesn’t cause them any problems, so people frequently get sick from eating undercooked chicken. Dr. David Hendrixson is a Professor of Microbiology at the UT Southwestern Medical Center. Dr. Hendrixson studies C. jejuni and how it causes disease. Dr. Hendrixson talks about why C. jejuni is preferentially found in chickens and other birds, how C. jejuni is also...

Our eyes are one of the most sensitive areas on our bodies, and they are constantly bathed in microbes, and yet we rarely get eye infections. However, certain microbes can take advantage of minor injuries to the eye and cause very serious infections that can lead to blindness. Dr. Eric Pearlman is a Professor of Ophthalmology at the University of California Irvine and the Director of the Institute for Immunology. Dr. Pearlman studies how the immune system is able to fight against...

Cheese is delicious, and also the product of a complex mixture of microbes. Different communities of microbes produce the wide variety of cheeses made around the world. Dr. Rachel Dutton is an Assistant Professor at the University of California San Diego who studies cheese microbiomes. Dr. Dutton talks about how cheese is made, how the cheese microbiome is a great model for understanding how microbes interact with each other, how the microbial community determines what type of cheese is...

Candida albicans is the most common cause of fungal disease in the United States. C. albicans can cause serious and often fatal systemic infections, especially in hospitalized patients with underlying conditions. Dr. Cornelius Clancy is an Associate Professor at the University of Pittsburgh and the Director of the XDR Pathogen Lab. Dr. Clancy talks about the clinical implications of fungal infections, how a physician should communicate with patients, how the unique perspective of a clinician...

Lyme Disease is the most common vector-borne disease in the United States.  The bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi is transmitted to humans through the bite of a deer tick, and can lead to the debilitating disease that most commonly is associated with arthritis, but can also cause heart and neurological problems. Dr. Tim Sellati is the Chief Scientific Officer at the Global Lyme Alliance (GLA).  GLA is dedicated to development of more effective diagnostics and treatments of Lyme and other...

Some bacteria have the amazing ability to orient themselves using the earth’s magnetic field, due to the presence of an intracellular organelle called the magnetosome, which are estimated to have evolved 3 billion years ago.   Dr. Arash Komeili is a Professor at the University of California Berkeley who studies bacterial magnetosomes.  Dr. Komeili talks about how magnetotactic bacteria were discovered, how the earth’s magnetic field orients the bacteria in the aquatic environment, whether a...

Tuberculosis (TB) remains one of the most prevalent infectious diseases in the world, with approximately 10 million people becoming sick and 1.5 million people dying every year from Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection. Dr. William Jacobs is a Professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and member of the National Academy of Sciences who studies M. tuberculosis. TB is notoriously difficult to treat, due to the slow growth and persistence of the bacteria in the lungs, requiring...

What happens when a bacterium gets old? Continuous culture of bacteria without any added nutrients can reveal the dynamics of “old” bacteria. Dr. Steve Finkel is a Professor at University of Southern California who studies what happens beyond “stationary phase” in bacterial cultures. Finkel studies the Growth Advantage in Stationary Phase (GASP) phenotype, which dominates in “old” bacterial cultures, and which represents adaptive evolutionary change. Finkel talks about how studying old...

Despite comprising half of the population, women are underrepresented as scientific professionals. The reasons for underrepresentation are multi-factorial. Dr. Joan Bennett is a Professor at Rutgers University who studies fungi; she is a past president of the American Society of Microbiology, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Throughout her career, Bennett has taken a special interest in the advancement of women in science and she continues to work on behalf of women’s issues...

Genomics-based technologies have revolutionized science. From microarrays to next-generation sequencing, genomics technologies are having a tremendous positive impact on all aspects of human health. Dr. Joe DeRisi is a professor at the University of California San Francisco and co-president of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub. DeRisi has been at the forefront of developing and using genomics-based technologies to address infectious disease challenges. DeRisi talks about how genomics helped solve...