Infectious Thoughts

I recently popped into the vast Borders bookshop on Queen Street to get myself a copy of Trick or Treatment by Edzard Ernst and Simon Singh. I borrowed it from a friend a few months ago and have been meaning to buy it ever since. I first located the ‘Science’ section and learnt three things: 1. It’s located … Read More

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I’m feeling a little melancholic today. Last night I saw an obituary on the Guardian website for Dr Judit Nagy, a former colleague from my time at Imperial College London. She was the director of the proteomics facility, an excellent scientist and genuinely nice person. In an environment like Imperial it was always nice to have role models … Read More

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I recently took my 4 year old daughter to see Disney’s Tinkerbell and the Great Fairy Rescue at the cinema. It was just after the NZ Skeptics annual conference which due to a lack of alternative arrangements she had been forced to attend (to be fair she had spent most of it sat at the back watching movies … Read More

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For anyone who has missed the news this past week, the NZ kiwifruit industry is potentially in big trouble with a growing number of orchards infected with Pseudomonas syringae pathovar* (pv) actinidiae (PSA). PSA causes kiwifruit canker**. The halo they produce on infected leaves is caused by a toxin whose production seems to be regulated by temperature. I have to … Read More

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It was with great sadness that I recently read that the University of California (UC) and Nature Publishing Group (NPG) had come to an agreement to stop UC from boycotting NPG. For those who aren’t familiar with this story, it goes something like this. In June of this year a letter was circulated from the UC library to faculty … Read More

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I thought I would use my first post to introduce myself and explain the reason(s) for infectious thoughts. I am a research scientist with a background in medical and environmental microbiology. I’ll come back to what I do and what I’m interested in a bit later. As well as microorganisms, I am also obsessed with bioluminescence (the production of light … Read More

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It’s not because I specifically wanted one. I have a nickel allergy that makes me sensitive to pretty much everything else. Apparently an estimated 65 million other Europeans are also sensitive to nickel. A recent paper* in Nature Immunology has found the culprit: Toll-like receptor (TLR) 4. The TLR family of proteins play an important role in … Read More

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