Disease Detectives

[Music]

since the beginning of medicine

scientists and doctors have been playing

detective with new diseases

they have to find the who who’s getting

sick the what

what’s making them sick the how how is

it spreading

and the where where did it originate

if you think about it this is dangerous

work along comes a new disease that no

one knows anything about

no one knows what it does how it spreads

or where it came from

fortunately over the years scientists

have developed methods and tactics

to get to the bottom of any new disease

outbreak

this won’t mean an immediate cure for

the disease but it will help identify it

and track it

even though there are several more i’ll

just be focusing on two

genetic analysis and disease modeling

let’s start with genetic analysis

viruses contain deoxyribonucleic acid

also known as dna and ribonucleic acid

also known as rna giving them the power

to evolve

as the viruses and bacteria grow the

molecular material

which is the basic material inside cells

changes

though they don’t live for very long

viruses and bacterias are able to

recreate themselves

in huge quantities this evolutionary

change

which can be very fast is called the

molecular clock

when a virus travels to a new victim it

starts a new branch of that virus’s

genetic tree

then the clock will tick until the

victim is killed by the infection

or until the victim’s body manages to

defeat it

as a part of genetic analysis scientists

observe the genetic sequence

of of the virus in the victim’s body and

compare it

to the sequence of the same virus in

other people who might also be

experiencing

sickness researchers can also assume

that viruses with similar sequences come

from the same place

around the same time giving clues as to

how

a disease traveled from person to person

an example of a disease that genetic

analysis has been

used on is aids or hiv

there’s still no cure but with this

method a medicate

a medication was created to help control

the symptoms

more recently during the cove 19

pandemic

scientists using genetic analysis have

shared their sequencing

of thousands of coronavirus genomes this

is worldwide data

that helps scientists trace the origin

of new outbreaks

identify where and when the disease was

transmitted

and identify mutations for example

there’s growing evidence that of over 13

000 mutations

one of them in particular 614g

has made the virus more infectious

genetic sequencing has also enabled

rapid vaccine development

by helping researchers figure out which

part of the virus is best to target

so now you know about genetic analysis

and its relation to cova 19.

the second method is disease modeling

a disease model is something that helps

track and figure out how a disease will

spread

they’re made up of all the facts and

data that scientists have accumulated

about the disease

even if there’s very little information

to start with scientists can look at

similar diseases and think

what if this one will spread similarly

to that one

however if the data put into the model

isn’t of good quality

then the quality of the information

obtained from the same model won’t be

good either

so a disease model can help analyze a

disease outbreak

and help figure out the pattern of a

spread in a population

modeling can also be used to clarify

complex biological systems

for example scientists have used disease

models

to help develop new and more precise

treatments for many types of cancer

of course this method is also being used

now during the coronavirus pandemic

disease modeling is being used by local

and federal governments

to help organize their resources

the data informs decisions about social

distancing measures

and other needs such as a number of

hospital beds

so it’s greatly helping the situation

now you know a little bit more about

tracking diseases

i hope this was helpful and that you

enjoyed the talk thank you so much for

listening