An enzyme found in many bacteria, including the bacterium that gives us strep throat, has given mankind a cheap and effective tool with which to edit our own genes. This technology, called CRISPR, is also being used to understand how the immune system responds to a viral attack.

Using large amounts of data, his research reveals what happens minute–by–minute when the immune system responds to a virus.

The results of his team’s research were recently published in the respected online journal Systems Biology and Applications.

When the flu or any other virus attacks the body, it has to react with lightning speed.

“It’s not like defence cells are just sitting around waiting in some corner of the body to gobble up viruses – and boom, it’s all taken care of,” says Kandasamy.

As Kandasamy explains, “What happens inside the defence cells is a very comprehensive step–by–step reaction. Signals are sent to the nucleus to initiate a production of new proteins that will take part in the inflammatory reaction and that the cell will use to destroy the virus. This all takes some time. But even a tiny chemical modification of proteins in the cell also enables the cell to start reacting super quickly.”

He and his team can map these reactions in extreme detail from the moment a virus infects a cell. By frequently repeating the mapping process in the hours after infection, they can create a detailed map of the cell’s reactions.