Overview: Wellbeing is something we take for granted, most of the time, though when we do get sick, we really appreciate the time when we felt well and are desperate to get fit again as quickly as possible. In order to minimize the number of times we get infected, to get well as quickly as possible when we do, and to minimize transmitting our infection to family and friends, we need to understand more about infections, how our body deals with them, how they can be prevented, and how they are treated. Let’s be brave, and confront our inner demons, and explore our interactions with pathogenic microbes!
Creation of the TFs is a work in progress: those already available are indicated by titles that are live links. Titles of those still in the pipeline are shown for context.
(For vignettes of some of the star actors in these stories, see the MicroRogues and MicroVaccines Portrait Galleries)
Our defences against infections
- Our microbiomes: what do they do for us?
- Susceptibility to infections
- Innate immunity and trained immunity
- Fever
How microbes cause disease
- Pathogenic biofilms
- Mycotoxins: fungal toxins in our food
- Microbes and neurogenerative disease
Disease Transmission
- Endemic, epidemic, pandemic
- Modelling infection dynamics
- Foodborne microbial disease
- Seafood-borne disease
- Human pathogens that infect salad vegetables
- Sexual transmission of infections
- Hospital infections
- vectors and infection
- Clonality and its importance
Prevention and treatment of disease
- Vaccination
- Why vaccines do not always protect
- Antibiotics
- Probiotics
- Harnessing friendly bugs to chase away nasty ones in hospitals
- Natural Products as Antimicrobial Agents
- Faecal Matter Transplantation
How pathogens avoid our defenses
One Health
- Environmentally-transmitted diseases
- The food animal plagues
- To be healthy we need exposure to microbes
- Antimicrobial Resistance and One Health
- The environment:hospital:therapy nexus – the case of Clostridium difficile
- Antibiotics and antibiotic resistance in the environment
- Viruses in the food chain
- Pathogen ecology and alternate lifestyles
- The international wildlife trade and public health