Jonathan Ball on his arms race against viruses
The Life Scientific
BBC
4.6 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 30 July 2019
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Ebola, Zika, Sars, Mers - rarely a week goes by without a deadly virus stealing the headlines.
For Jonathan Ball, getting to know a virus at its most basic level is crucial to mounting a defence. As the son of a coal miner, who grew up in a mining village in the 1970s, a future in academic research studying deadly viruses wasn’t really on the agenda.
Yet his work has led him to the forefront of scientific research to find the antibodies that can protect us from some of the nastiest diseases known to humankind.
As Professor of Virology at Nottingham University, he’s interested in how a virus evolves and mutates, as it moves from person to person, so that he can pinpoint chinks in its armour to find a way to disable it.
However, there are occupational hazards to his chosen field of work. Just when his own research was starting to show promise, another team pipped him to the post!
Yet, ever the optimist, he believes this just adds to the excitement.
Producer: Beth Eastwood
Transcript
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| 0:40.0 | Welcome to the podcast of the Life Scientific. |
| 0:44.0 | BBC Sounds, Music Radio Podcasts. |
| 0:48.0 | Ebola, Zika, SARS, MERS, |
| 0:51.0 | rarely a week goes by without a deadly virus stealing the headlines. |
| 0:55.2 | Ebola's most recent outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, |
| 0:58.9 | now a global health emergency, is once again a sobering reminder of just how lethal a virus can be and |
| 1:06.0 | how powerless we are to stop it. |
| 1:08.2 | For Jonathan Ball, getting to know a virus at its most basic level is crucial to being able to mount a defence. |
| 1:14.0 | As professor of virology at Nottingham University, |
| 1:18.0 | he's interested in how a virus evolves and mutates |
| 1:21.0 | as it moves between people, so that he can pinpoint chinks in its |
| 1:24.7 | armour to find a way to disable it. If you really want to make a difference that you can |
| 1:29.6 | see in your lifetime, Jonathan says, virology is where it's at, from life-saving treatment |
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