Robert J. Gifford: Sequence, Blast, rinse and repeat

The CVR Presents Research Goes Viral

In this final episode, we change gears, from innate immunity to virus biology and evolution. Today, postdocs Connor and Elihu talk with Dr. Robert Gifford, CVR’s resident evolutionary virologist and senior research fellow. Rob’s lab combines sequence data and software development to explore virus genomics and coevolution of viruses and their hosts. He applies virus genomics to help and guide treatment of HCV-infected patients; support genomic surveillance and outbreak response for bluetongue and rabies; and explore the diversity of endogenous viral elements in published genome sequence data, just to name a few of his projects. Listen to him tell us how he became interested in this paleovirology by starting out working on endogenous retroviruses at Imperial College long before the NGS metagenomics techniques come about. Thank you for listening to us, and thanks to Rob for joining us this episode. As always, you can find our previous content at https://cvrblog.myportfolio.com/, email us at [e-mail] or tweet us @CVRblog Join us next season with more new hosts and more contagious thinking. Featuring: Connor Bamford, Elihu Aranday-Cortes and Robert J. Gifford Editing: Elihu Aranday-Cortes Music: Inspire - Benjamin Tissot - www.bensound.com Photograph: Elihu Aranday-Cortes