Meet the Microbiologist

Pat Brown founded Impossible Foods with a mission to replace animals as a food production technology. Here, he discusses the ways microbial engineering helps produce the plant hemoglobin that provide…

CRISPR is a genome-editing tool, but what is its role in microbial biology and evolution? Joe Bondy-Denomy discusses his discovery of the first anti-CRISPR protein and the many unanswered questions s…

Julie’s Biggest Takeaways:

Parasites are incredibly varied in many characteristics, including their size! Some are microscopic, while others are macroscopic and can be seen with the naked eye. Not ju…

How did discoveries made with bovine papillomavirus help scientists develop the human papillomavirus vaccine? Doug Lowy discusses his journey that began with basic research and led to the production …

Burkholderia pseudomallei is an endemic soil-dwelling bacterium in southeast Asia, where it causes melioidosis. Direk Limmathurotsakul discusses his work to improve the official reporting numbers and…

When will the next disease outbreak occur? Why are some pests better at spreading disease than others? Disease Ecologist Barbara Han talks about her research that addresses these questions with compu…

Why have scientists struggled to generate a protective HIV vaccine? Dan Barouch lays out the unique challenges and discusses the ongoing clinical trial with an adenovirus-based vaccine developed in h…

Erica Ollmann Saphire discusses her research on Ebola virus glycoprotein and the changing nature of structural biology.

The Ebola virus glycoprotein sequence can vary up to 50% between Ebola virus sp…

We pull back the curtain as former show hosts Merry Buckley and Carl Zimmer talk Meet the Scientist origins, favorite interviews and microbial topics.

Julie’s Biggest Takeaways:

Though the show start…

How does an engineer approach microbial genetics? cworks with microbes of all kinds to optimize metabolic and agricultural systems. Here he discusses his work with Rhodobacter to make biofuels and fo…

Over the course of a few decades, scientists have learned how insect endosymbiont bacteria affects insect reproduction and have used this understanding to control mosquito-born diseases. Seth Bordens…

Christine Foreman explains how microbes can survive and grow on glaciers, and what we can learn from microbes in glacier ice cores.

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A very small proportion of people infected with HIV do not develop AIDS. Mark Connors talks about 2 patient populations that his lab studies, the elite controllers and the elite neutralizers, who con…

In the early 2000s, Andrew Read predicted that non-sterilizing vaccines would lead to more virulent disease. He was able to test his hypothesis with the real-world example of Marek’s disease, a disea…

A recent Nipah virus outbreak in Kerala, India, was halted due to improved detection capabilities. G. Arunkumar tells the story of his involvement.

Host: Julie Wolf 

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Robin Patel discusses her work on prosthetic joint infections and how metagenomics is changing infectious disease diagnostic procedures.

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Julie’s Biggest Take…

To eliminate malaria, you have to stop transmission, and that’s what Carolina Barillas-Mury hopes to do. Her work on the interaction of the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum may lead to a transm…

How do researchers study a new pathogen? Stanley Perlman talks about how virus researchers studied SARS and MERS after they emerged, what they learned, and why there are no more cases of SARS. He als…

You may know that beer is fermented, but did you know making chocolate requires a fermentation step? Kevin Verstrepen discusses how his lab optimizes flavor profiles of the yeast used in this ferment…

How can the humble zebrafish teach us about the human microbiome? John Rawls discusses the benefits of using animal models

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Julie’s Biggest Takeaways:

Zebrafish and oth…