Communicating Immunology (with Brianne Barker)

How do you get freshman undergraduates to take on complex immunological research? How did colonization enable the spread of HIV in Central Africa and Haiti? Does the militarist language of immunology- ie “fighting the war against viruses” undermine the complexity of the human immune system which is more comparable to tending a garden?

Brianne Barker, Associate Professor of Biology at Drew University with expertise in vaccine development, HIV biology and understanding immune responses to viral infection joins the WBI show. She shares that the privilege of working at a non-R1 institution solely with undergraduate students is an opportunity to pursue your research interests relatively autonomously and without the same external pressure to publish. 
Brianne is also the co-host of the Immune podcast, part of the TWIV (This Week In Virology) podcast suite that inspired our show. We cover a lot of ground in this show, from pattern recognition receptors to science pedagogy and a discussion of the Barker Lab’s recently published paper, Polyglutamine binding protein 1 (PQBP1) inhibits innate immune responses to cytosolic DNA

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Host: J. Khadijah Abdurahman, Ilan Mandel
Music: Drew Lewis

Links for the Episode:
Colonialism in Africa helped launch the HIV epidemic a century ago
The Impact of Globalization on Infectious Disease Emergence and Control
The 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine - Press release
Interferon discovery and ferret flu
HVTN Studies
Black in Immuno
Immune 37: Black in Immuno | Immune

Recommendations:
Pandemic by Sonia Shah
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Spillover by David Quammen