Reading material:
Monday July 23:
Jon Boyle:Human Placental Syncytiotrophoblasts Restrict Toxoplasma gondii Attachment and Replication and Respond to Infection by Producing Immunomodulatory Chemokines
A Toxoplasma gondii locus required for the direct manipulation of host mitochondria has maintained multiple ancestral functions
Dissection of the in vitro developmental program of Hammondia hammondi reveals a link between stress sensitivity and life cycle flexibility in Toxoplasma gondii
Alex Grinberg:
Genetic superdiversity of microbial pathogens and how it affects molecular epidemiological research
Pathogen populations are often genetically super-diverse, posing many challenges to the design and implementation of epidemiological studies. In this talk I will expand on the concept of super-diversity and its origins, and (to cement these concepts) run a class simulation of sampling from a hypothetical super-diverse population. Through this exercise we will explore how this structure may affect epidemiological research and what can be done to overcome this limitation. The point of this session is to enhance your ability to critically evaluate published data and make a positive contribution to the most challenging part of any epidemiological study: the sampling.
Counting the Uncountable: Statistical Approaches to Estimating Microbial Diversity