Globally around one billion people are infected by parasitic nematodes, and their impact on livestock can be devastating. For millennia, parasites and hosts have been locked in an evolutionary war, an arms race with ever changing goal posts. However, scientists are using modern technology to bring new weapons to the fore.
Here, Naturally Speaker James Burgon talks to Dr Collette Britton, a Reader in the Institute and Associate Academic at the School of Veterinary Medicine. Hear about her work on the front line of this fight as she helps to develop better vaccines against nematode infections and identify the molecular basis of drug resistance in these parasites. Also find out what motivated her to enlist in the first place.
(The BUG consortium mentioned in this podcast is a multi-institute project “Building Upon the Genome” of Haemonchus contortus, a major nematode parasite of livestock. Find out more in its very own blog post written by postdoctoral researcher Roz Laing)
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Intro and outro music sampled from: “The Curtain Rises” and “Early Riser” Kevin MacLeod [CC BY 3.0]
Naturally Speaking 
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