SickKids – A History
[caption id="attachment_1923" align="aligncenter" width="2550"] Written and designed by Stanley Zhou. Photo credit: Joanna Lee.[/caption]
The Great (un)Changing (un)Scientific Debate on Childhood Vaccines
Without question, the most controversial, rumour-driven health debate of the past 15 years regards the safety and efficacy of vaccines. At face value, skepticism about vaccines makes sense. Why inject...
Driven By Discovery: Alumni Interview with Brad Jones
Despite decades of research on HIV/AIDS, genuine cures for the widespread disease remain elusive. This challenge has not dissuaded University of Toronto Department of Immunology graduate R. Brad Jones, who...
Behind Enemy Lines: Using Vector Biology to Reduce Disease Transmission
Nearly half of the world’s population is at risk of malaria infection, a mosquito-borne disease caused by the parasitic protozoan Plasmodium. Without an approved malaria vaccine, infection prevention has focused...
CRISPR in the Red Queen’s Court: The Evolutionary Arms Race with Phage and Other Adventures in Wonderland
The CRISPR/Cas system (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats/CRISPR-associated sequences) is an adaptive immune system found in archaea (extremophiles) and bacteria. Briefly, acquired CRISPR-driven immunity is based on integration of...
Trust Your Gut: The Beginner’s Guide to Microbiome Research
THE WORLD WITHIN US: LIFE AS A SUPRAORGANISM [caption id="attachment_1647" align="alignright" width="297"] BOX 1: Meet Dr. Susan Robertson, a trained microbial ecologist currently working as a postdoctoral fellow in Dr....
The Big Data Barrier
The Human Genome Project constituted one of the first large-scale research projects to generate vast amounts of biological information, what today we refer to as “Big Data”. Initiated in 1990,...
Breaking Up is Hard to Do: Post-Ebola Syndrome Offers Insight into Viral Evolution
[caption id="attachment_1708" align="alignleft" width="359"] Digitally-coloured SEM of Ebola particles budding from the cell surface. Image Credit: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), 2014.[/caption] On October 19th, 2014, Dr....
Alumni Interview – Ann McPherson
[caption id="attachment_1675" align="aligncenter" width="526"] Dr. Ann McPherson, PhD '13, Dr. Tania Watts Laboratory[/caption] We caught up with recent Immunology PhD graduate, Ann McPherson, to discuss her career moves after graduation...
Cancer Treatment Goes Viral
From the simplest to the most complex, viruses have evolved to multiply within a host cell. By harnessing the cell’s machinery, the virus is able to propagate, often causing illness...