Battling Bugs

Meningococci are the major cause of bacterial meningitis in the UK. This talk will focus on how these bacteria cause meningitis, where they come from and the use of vaccines to prevent this disease.

Lung diseases such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and pulmonary fibrosis, are some of the most common medical conditions in the world, but why do some people get them while others don’t? Our group at the University of Leicester look for differences in people’s DNA sequence that affect their risk of developing lung diseases. Some of these genetic differences also appear to affect severity of COVID-19. I will describe how we undertake our research and what it can tell us about the biology of these conditions and how to treat them.

Structural biology encompass various biophysical techniques that allow scientist to obtain the three-dimensional structure of molecules that are a million time smaller than a millimeter. Yet, knowing the structure of these molecules is crucial to design drugs that counteract their actions in diseases. During this talk, I will describe the macroscopic world of molecules and explain briefly how we can visualize them and design specific drugs against them.