This compilation of webinars touch on the various human diseases are most commonly attributed to the subject matter of microbiology, as well as the many microbes that are also responsible for numerous beneficial processes.
The encapsulated fungus Cryptococcus neoformans is the most common cause of fungal meningitis, with the highest rate of cryptococcosis found in AIDS patients. Despite antifungal treatment, c...
Human skin is characterized by a limited number of phyla including, Actinomycetota, Bacillota and Pseudomonadota. In particular, Staphylococcus (Bacillota) and Corynebacterium (Actinomycetot...
A significant increase in agricultural production is needed to meet the demand for food to feed the expected ~10 billion people by 2050. This increased agricultural output will also require...
Plant-infecting viruses cause significant losses to agriculture, including to staple crops such as wheat, maize, and rice. Preventing and managing endemic and emerging plant diseases is an o...
Saliva serves as a reservoir for the upper aerodigestive tract (UADT). Saliva collection is non-invasive, convenient, and amenable to self-collection. Thus, saliva is an ideal resource for l...
Flow cytometry is a powerful technology for investigating questions related to the immune response and its sustenance, as well as detailed mechanisms of COVID-19. Simplified cell-based and b...
Sepsis is a life-threatening condition that is caused by the immune system’s inability to respond appropriately to an infection. How sepsis can change the gut microbiome in ways that a...
Influenza severity is determined by the interplay between the virus and the host response. Previously, we identified a three-pronged lung gene expression signature that predicted severe infl...
Adjuvant discovery is largely devoted toward the development of vaccines meant to elicit prophylactic humoral immunity. While useful against infectious diseases, this mode of adaptive immuni...
Early detection is critical for prompt and effective treatment of acute infectious diseases. For tick-borne diseases (TBD), the lack of accurate early diagnosis can result in delayed treatme...
The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic poses an unprecedented challenge for public health, which is caused by infection of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV...
Antibiotics have radically transformed our world by making previously incurable illnesses treatable. Millions of lives have been saved and our wellbeing significantly improved as a result. Th...
The COVID-19 pandemic is a dramatic reminder of the problems that viral zoonoses can cause worldwide. The rapid development of vaccines and antivirals......
Emerging viruses like SARS, SARS-CoV-2, MERS-CoV, Hendra, Nipah, West Nile, sin nombre, LuJo, MERS, Powassan, dengue, chikungunya, zika, Ebola, and Marburg pose a growing threat to public he...
Highly efficacious vaccines against COVD-19 have been generated in a record time, and allowed a great impact in preventing severe disease due to SARS-CoV-2 infection in vaccinated individual...
Human respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) remains a significant public health concern, particularly for vulnerable populations such as infants, young children, and immunocompromised individua...
The recent outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 underscores the need for understanding the evolutionary processes that drive the emergence and adaptation of zoonotic viruses in humans. Here, we show that...
For the past years, my laboratory has been working on microfluidic devices to enable the analysis of single cells. Our technology of choice has been droplet microfluidics that encapsulates s...
For centuries, humans have become infected with endemic circulating Coronaviruses (hCoV), typically repeatedly throughout life. To understand how these respiratory infections establish CD4 T...
Self-amplifying RNA replicons are promising candidates for next generation vaccines against human coronaviruses with pandemic potential. Self-amplification of RNAs in host cells generates mo...
In this session, a review of the impact of COVID-19 on the Forensic Science Program at the University of Toronto will be explored. Challenges for both undergraduate and graduate education wi...
Borrelia burgdorferi, the causative agent of Lyme disease, cycles between an Ixodes spp. vector and a vertebrate reservoir host, typically small rodents. Humans become infected when they int...
Droplet generators are at the heart of many microfluidic devices developed for life science applications but are difficult to tailor to each specific application. The high fabrication costs,...
Macrophages have been implicated in both the resolution and progression of influenza, but the drivers of these outcomes are poorly understood. We probed mouse lung transcriptomic datasets us...
Microfluidic technologies have opened up new possibilities for ultra-low volume, and ultrafast assays, compared to bulk-scale counterparts. We have been focused on developing new tools for d...
The gut microbiota has been proposed to affect the risk and prognosis of various health outcomes. Related to pregnancy, existing studies suggest that pregnant women have a distinct microbiot...
We live in a revolutionary era during which technology is leading to amazing advances in medicine. Parallel and aided by the development of artificial intelligence (AI) are the emergence of...
The encapsulated fungus Cryptococcus neoformans is the most common cause of fungal meningitis, with the highest rate of cryptococcosis found in AIDS patients. Despite antifungal treatment, c...
