Meet The Microbiologist - The Scientists Behind The Microbiology

Viral gastroenteritis around the world causes 200,000 deaths globally each year. Mary Estes talks about her work on 2 gastroenteritis-causing viruses, rotavirus and norovirus, and tells the story of her discovery of the first viral enterotoxin. She also describes how noroviruses have changed from human volunteer studies to studies using “miniguts,” a system now used with many enteropathogenic microorganisms. Julie’s Biggest Takeaways: Rotaviruses and noroviruses kill 200,000 people annually, despite an available rotavirus vaccine and current anti-infective measures. Rotavirus is generally associated with gastrointestinal disease in the very young and the very old, while norovirus infects people at all life stages. Rotavirus is so stable that even when viral samples are extremely dessicated by lyophilization, the samples remain perfectly infectious. Rotavirus stability is largely due to 3 concentric capsid cells. NSP4 is a rotavirus enterotoxin, and the first viral enterotoxin to be discovered. It affects the