Viruses Are Dumb, But We Can Learn From Them Nonetheless: A Conversation with Adolfo Garcia-Sastre
Finding Genius Podcast
Richard Jacobs
4.4 ā¢ 1K Ratings
šļø 22 September 2020
ā±ļø 43 minutes
šļø Recording | iTunes | RSS
š§¾ļø Download transcript
Summary
How do viruses hijack your body's cells? Why do they cause infectious disease in some people and not others, and what can they teach us about human biology? The COVID-19 situation is unprecedented, but the research questions it's triggered aren't the first of their kind.
Tune in to discover:
- Why viral mechanisms that appear sophisticated might be simpler than you think, and how they are surprisingly error-prone
- How to understand the relationship between viral infection mechanisms and mechanisms of viral spread
- How genetic information and knowledge is passed to and from viruses
With over 25 years' worth of research experience on the molecular biology of influenza viruses, Adolfo Garcia-Sastre is both a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Director of theĀ Global Health and Emerging Pathogens InstituteĀ of Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. For Garcia-Sastre, studying viruses is a way of simplifying the study of more complex organisms, including humans.
"Most people think thatā¦viruses are smart, and that they come with very smart mechanismsā¦I am one of the few scientists that believe the opposite; I think that viruses are extremely dumbā¦they are just what they are because that's what they've evolved to," he says.
He continues by explaining why he's developed this uncommon understanding of viruses, hitting on a number of compelling topics along the way, including viral latency, virus virulence and the balance between infecting a host and keeping it alive, the transfer of genetic information in the evolution and adaptation of infectious viruses, and why he views the question, "Are viruses alive?" to be one of mere semantics.
Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Forget frequently asked questions common sense common knowledge or Google how about advice from a real genius |
| 0:06.8 | 95% of people in any profession are good enough to be qualified and licensed 5% go and beyond. They become very good at what they do. |
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| 0:18.3 | Richard Jacobs has made it his life's mission to find them for you. |
| 0:22.4 | He hunts down and interviews geniuses in every field, sleep science, cancer, stem cells, |
| 0:27.2 | ketogenic diets, and more. |
| 0:28.8 | Here come the geniuses. |
| 0:30.4 | This is the Finding Genius Podcast. |
| 0:33.0 | The Richard Jacobs. |
| 0:35.0 | Hello, this is Richard Jacobs with the Finding Genius Podcast. |
| 0:41.0 | My guest today is Adolfo Garcia Sastre. He's a professor in the |
| 0:46.3 | Microbiology Department. He's also the director of Global Health and |
| 0:49.8 | Emerging Pathogens Institute at the ICON School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. |
| 0:55.6 | And you know, according to his background, he's for 25 years he's been researching and |
| 1:00.4 | looking at molecular biology of influenza viruses and other negative strand RNA virus. |
| 1:05.8 | So I'm a very accomplished person in the virology field and I wanted to have him here because this |
| 1:10.6 | interview is going to be part of the Understanding Viruses book that I'm going to be putting out. |
| 1:16.0 | So I don't know if all thanks for coming. How you doing today? |
| 1:18.0 | Okay, I'm doing fine. Thank you. |
| 1:20.0 | Great, great. Okay. Well, we'll get started on the questions. Let's first start with your background. So what got you interested in working on viruses in the first place so many years ago? |
| 1:30.0 | Well, you know, when I was, I did my college in biology and then I became interested when I was doing college in biochemistry and somehow I got into the |
| 1:46.6 | department of biochemistry in Spain and that's what I did my PhD thesis and you know it was biochemistry but I was dealing with a protein of a virus and |
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