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This is Lindsay Smith Rogers, and today our topic is gain of function research. Biosecurity expert, Dr. Gigi

Granval of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, returns to the podcast to talk about

new oversight of research involving potentially dangerous pathogens and why this research is so

important to improving our understanding of viruses and how to prevent future

pandemics. Let's listen. Gigi Grombal, thank you so much for returning to public health on call.

Today we're talking about gain of function research, and specifically this past May,

the White House announced some new guidelines and policies around this

research. So let's start with just identifying, defining what is gain of function research.

Yeah, so gain of function was a term that was created to describe some experiments that were

done on H5N1 word flu, which is in the news for another reason.

And this was 10 years ago that this term was created.

And it's been a controversial term because, you know, gain of what function?

But really what people mean is gain of the functions of either transmissibility or pathogenicity. So making a

virus worse. And that was important to figure out when these studies were done on avian flu 10 years

ago, 10 plus years ago, because people were worried that H5N1 could jump from animals to humans and cause a pandemic.

And people wanted to figure out if it was going to start spreading between mammals,

what were those changes going to be?

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