"Even though it's quite an [evolutionarily] ancient form of immunity-it has many characteristics that are conserved between different organisms, from animals to plants-it's incredibly important," said Le Pen.
"What's fun about this field is that viruses reveal a lot about the biology of their hosts," he said. "The cell is a beautiful and complex machine, and as biologists, we are reverse engineers trying to understand how it works."
Le Pen conducts basic research focused on uncovering the biological mechanisms of how the innate immune system responds to RNA viruses, which cause diseases such as COVID-19, influenza, and others.
With this one goal, Le Pen has divided his time between infecting two different hosts with RNA viruses: human cells and a worm known as C. elegans.
#innate-immune-system #rna-viruses #immunology #biological-research #harvard-th-chan-school-of-public-health
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