Understanding Viruses - Viruses/Immunity Set - Part 1. This clip offers a simplified look at how viruses are structured and how they infect living host cells.

Poliomyelitis is a disease caused by the poliovirus, which has the ability to infect motor neurons in the spinal cord and cause paralysis. American President Franklin Roosevelt was famously crippled by polio. The poliovirus exists in a...

This video provides a brief introduction to bacteria and their role in causing infections. It also mentions the existence of different types of bacteria, such as those found in harsh environments like hot springs and deep ocean areas....

Zika is a virus that has been making the news lately, particularly due to its capacity for in utero transmission in pregnant women which has the potential to cause a birth defect called microcephaly. What is this virus? Where did it come...

Now we know a bit more about how viruses interact with cells, whether those are bacterial cells, or animal cells, such as ours. But how do they gain access to our cells in the first place? How do viruses get inside the human body? Let's...

Lunar New Years’ festivities pose a great challenge for the Chinese government as it tries to contain the Wuhan coronavirus. <br/>

Learn more about how amputation of injured limbs saved the lives of soldiers during the American Civil War.

Vaccinations protect both humans and animals from a wide range of preventable and potentially serious illnesses. With vaccines, we take advantage of one of the most important aspects of the immune system: the ability to develop...

As we know from our understanding of microbiology, pathogens are everywhere. So why don't we get sick all the time? And what are allergies, why do some people have them and others don't? And what are vaccines, how do those work? All of...

One day in 1976, there was a terrible outbreak of an unknown disease at an American Legion convention in Philadelphia. What was the pathogen responsible for this so-called Legionnaires' disease? Let's find out!

Hepatitis is a word that describes an inflammation of the liver. This can happen a few different ways, but it is very commonly due to viruses. Hepatitis A, B, C, D, and E all cause liver disease, even though the viruses themselves are...

In 1896, a mysterious disease spread through the Snake River Valley of Idaho. Some people called it a spotted fever, and hundreds got sick. As it turns out, this was all the doing of some bacteria, Rickettsia ricketssii. Let's get a...

Lots of kids get the chickenpox. I know I did! I was about four years old. It was awful. But now we can learn all kinds of things about the virus called Varicella-Zoster virus, which causes chickenpox and shingles. What is its structure...

The world is at the verge of a crisis, where the antibiotics we used to treat infections for decades are becoming useless. It takes a historian and a microbiologist to possibly save the day.

Our first instinct with infection in the body is often to find it and get rid of it! But, engineer Liangfang Zhang had another idea. With support from the National Science Foundation, Zhang and his team at UC-San Diego have created a...

Staphylococcus aureus is the bacteria responsible for what we commonly refer to as a staph infection. They are extremely common, but they are also developing antibiotic resistance at an alarming rate. Let's take a look at these now.

Syphilis is another infection that is typically caused by sexual contact, thanks to the pathogen Treponema pallidum. What does this bacterium do? How is the infection treated? Let's take a closer look now.

Lyme disease. It's that one you get from ticks! So what kind of ticks, and where are they? How does that work exactly, and what are the bacteria that are being transferred when they bite? The bacteria are called Borellia burgdorferi,...

Did you know that it wasn’t until around 200 years ago that people knew what caused infectious diseases? Before that, they believed that one cause was ‘bad air’, and so they carried around bunches of sweet-smelling flowers to sweeten the...

Understanding Vaccines - Viruses/Immunity Set - Part 4. This clips examines how vaccines are made and how they are able to produce immunity to infectious diseases.

The human body is a wondrously complex machine made of flesh, bone, muscles, organs, blood vessels and highly specialized systems that function together to sustain life. This fascinating third part of The Human Body series examines the...

Imagine a world without bananas! It’s a real possibility… a fungal disease is attacking and killing banana trees, and as yet we haven’t found a cure.

Antibiotics… one of the greatest discoveries of the 20th century. You’ve probably taken them at some point during your life… maybe for a throat or ear infection? About 20 doses of antibiotics are prescribed per 1,000 people every day...

We've probably all heard about the Ebola outbreak in Africa around 2014, and know that it's quite a terrifying pathogen. But what does it do exactly? Let's go through the basics!