The Viruses of Microbes—Simon Roux—Joint Genome Institute

07/19/20 • 33 min

2 Listeners

Simon Roux is a member of the metagenome project at the Joint Genome Institute, which is a part of the Berkeley Lab. In this episode, he discusses his research on viruses that affect microbial life. Tune in to discover:

How nutrient, UV, and chemical stress of the host cell could trigger the lytic cycle of viral reproduction
What is unique about filamentous bacteriophage
How phage predation could drive speciation of microorganisms
How biofilms can protect microbes from viruses

These days, it seems all the world has its focus on one virus, but Roux reminds us that there are likely billions of viruses in the universe, with at least one for every species on Earth. Over the course of the last five years or so, we’ve gone from having discovered just a few thousand virus genomes to now two million virus genomes. This is a massive amount of growth in data, and according to Roux, viruses will just continue to be discovered for the foreseeable future.

As part of the metagenome project, Roux uses a number of ‘omics’ to study the genetic composition and function of viruses, including metatranscriptomics and metabolomics. He focuses exclusively on viruses of microbes, whether bacteria, archaea, or protists. He explains that contrary to what many people think, viruses don’t just kill their host cells, but carry out an array of activities and may choose between a lytic infection and a chronic infection.

Roux discusses a number of topics involving phage, the viruses of bacteria. With over ten years’ worth of data at their fingertips, Roux is one of many researchers asking questions about the nature of the interactions between host cells of different types of microbes and viruses across microbial species.

To learn more about the work being done at Berkeley Lab and the Joint Genome Institute, visit https://www.lbl.gov/ and https://jgi.doe.gov/. Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK

How nutrient, UV, and chemical stress of the host cell could trigger the lytic cycle of viral reproduction
What is unique about filamentous bacteriophage
How phage predation could drive speciation of microorganisms
How biofilms can protect microbes from viruses

To learn more about the work being done at Berkeley Lab and the Joint Genome Institute, visit https://www.lbl.gov/ and https://jgi.doe.gov/. Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK

Previous Episode

How Cancer Fuels Itself: Christian Frezza Explains Metabolism of Cancer Types

Christian Frezza focuses on tissue-specific carcinogenesis and specifically metabolic pathways in an attempt to achieve the prevention of cancer progression. In this podcast he addresses

How tumor and metastases cells vary and why that's important,
How a finding regarding intermediates in metabolism that have signaling roles connecting metabolic pathways to oncogenesis produced a paradigm shift in cancer studies, and
Why scientists are attempting to use more sophisticated approaches to starving cancer such as targeting two different metabolic pathways simultaneously.

Christian Frezza works at the Medical Research Council (MRC) as a program leader in the MRC Cancer Unit at the University of Cambridge, a unit that investigates carcinogens, other cancer causes, differentiations between functionality of cancer types, and the prevention of cancer. His lab focuses specifically on metabolic determinants of cancerous transformation, which means understanding how cancer cells find their nutrients to grow and proliferate. He explains that this area of research is very exciting because they are revealing new aspects of cancer biology that can address therapies for different cancer types as well as a way to understand carcinogens.

He explains how tumors and metastases have very different the nutrient needs. For example, a metastasis has a metabolism need closer to the nutrient needs of tissue around it. Furthermore, while they know that all cancer causes increased glucose consumption, there are many differences between how cancer types metabolize.

He describes two important questions of his research: first, whether they can restrict some specific nutrients to affect growth; and second, if they can find that by using specific nutrients, they can identify certain markers of cancer transformation through identifying metabolites. Finally, overall this research will help understand the pathophysiology of cancer and mechanistic aspects of it. He also explains complications of the research and their findings as well as important steps and discoveries in the field.

To learn more, see his lab's website at mrc-cu.cam.ac.uk/research/Christian-frezza-folder and follow him on twitter as @FrezzaLab. Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK

Next Episode

undefined - A Bionic Eye To the Future—Zhiyong Fan—Functional and Advanced Nanostructures (FAN) Laboratory, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

A Bionic Eye To the Future—Zhiyong Fan—Functional and Advanced Nanostructures (FAN) Laboratory, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Professor Zhiyong Fan is a Professor in the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering and head of the Functional and Advanced Nanostructures (FAN) Laboratory at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and he joins the show to discuss the development of a new bionic eye that would enable robots and people with blindness to see. In this episode, you’ll learn:

What is anatomically different about cephalopod eyes that makes them superior even to human eyes
Why it has been so challenging to design spherical or hemispherical light sensors
How the bionic eye being developed could be self-powered, with no need for an external energy supply
Why “superhuman” vision might not actually be something people want

Fan’s initial inspiration for his current work stemmed from something that’s a source of inspiration for many: sci-fi films. In particular, he was amazed by the idea of creating a sophisticated artificial eye structure that could function like the human eye.

He explains that all of the current technology utilizing light sensing materials are restricted by flat rather than spherical substrates...that is, until about 2016 when Fan had the idea to use a porous hemispherical template to host light sensing material to form an artificial retina. This template is filled with semi-conductive nanowires which form a 3D array in a way that allows them to stand vertically inside the template and point toward the center of the sphere. The result? A structure very similar to that of the human retina.

Fan goes on to explain the next step in the creation of this aptly named “bionic eye,” the details of the processes which have led to the current product, how a bionic eye of this sort would work, the potential ways in which this technology could be further developed, and the feasibility of developing a bionic eye that can be fully implanted into a human eye socket.

Interested in learning more? Tune in and check out https://eezfan.home.ece.ust.hk/. Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK