Thu 05 Mar 13:00: Viruses: from within-host evolution to global pandemics Host - Charlotte Houldcroft
Viruses replicate within cells, but rely on transmission to be sustained in the long term, leading to at least two levels of selection, within and between hosts, which are often in conflict. During the first few months of the COVID -19 pandemic there was a general consensus that selection would be driven by between host transmission because of the short duration of typical SARS -CoV-2 infections. But then Alpha appeared, with its large constellation of mutations and associated transmission advantage, and with that came the proposition that this new variant emerged during a long persistent infection. By using deep sequencing data collected by hospitals during the early phase of the pandemic, and the more than 120,000 sequenced samples we collected as part of the Office for National Statistics COVID -19 Infection Survey, I will walk through the discoveries we have made, ranging from the tiny transmission bottleneck size of SARS -CoV-2, the high prevalence of persistent infections and their link to long Covid, to the balance between within-host evolution, epidemic waves of infection, and patterns of re-infection.
Host - Charlotte Houldcroft
- Speaker: Professor Katrina Lythgoe from Department of Biology, University of Oxford
- Thursday 05 March 2026, 13:00-14:00
- Venue: Biffen Lecture theatre and Zoom.
- Series: Genetics Seminar ; organiser: Caroline Newnham.
Thu 22 Jan 14:00: How personalised is your immune system? Host - Lin Wang
Immune repertoires provide a unique fingerprint reflecting the immune history of individuals, with potential applications in precision medicine. Can this information be used to identify a person uniquely? If it really is a personalised medical record, can it inform us about the outcomes of an infection? I will show how statistical analysis of immune repertoires sequencing experiments can answer these questions.
Host - Lin Wang
- Speaker: Professor Aleksandra Walczak from Laboratoire de physique, l’École Normale Supérieure, Paris
- Thursday 22 January 2026, 14:00-15:00
- Venue: G12 Large Lecture Theatre in Department of Plant Sciences and Zoom.
- Series: Genetics Seminar ; organiser: Caroline Newnham.
Thu 05 Mar 13:00: Viruses: from within-host evolution to global pandemics Host - Charlotte Houldcroft
Abstract not available
Host - Charlotte Houldcroft
- Speaker: Professor Katrina Lythgoe from Department of Biology, University of Oxford
- Thursday 05 March 2026, 13:00-14:00
- Venue: Biffen Lecture theatre and Zoom.
- Series: Genetics Seminar ; organiser: Caroline Newnham.
Thu 22 Jan 14:00: How personalised is your immune system? Host - Lin Wang
Immune repertoires provide a unique fingerprint reflecting the immune history of individuals, with potential applications in precision medicine. Can this information be used to identify a person uniquely? If it really is a personalised medical record, can it inform us about the outcomes of an infection? I will show how statistical analysis of immune repertoires sequencing experiments can answer these questions.
Host - Lin Wang
- Speaker: Professor Aleksandra Walczak from Laboratoire de physique, l’École Normale Supérieure, Paris
- Thursday 22 January 2026, 14:00-15:00
- Venue: Biffen Lecture theatre and Zoom.
- Series: Genetics Seminar ; organiser: Caroline Newnham.