a hypochondriac's guide to becoming disease-free

1. eat the innocuous bacteria from off the agarose gel, pictured above
2. take the class that i will be teaching in two years

Course Description and Goals: The main goal of this course is to understand how and why microbes (bacteria and viruses) cause human disease. In order to obtain this goal, we will first study the microorganisms that infect various parts of the body and how they do so. For example, we will talk about how both pneumococcus and the influenza virus infect the respiratory tract. Although these two microbes are quite different in the way they infect, they both invade the same region of the body. Why? How do they survive in this part of the body, and how does transmission occur given their anatomical niche.
In the second part of the class, students will be asked to research host immune responses to infection and then teach their classmates about the dynamics between microbes and host cells. The interplay between host and microbe is an important determinant for whether or not disease occurs.
Finally, in the last part of the class, we will review case studies as a group. Students will come to class having read over a study that examines disease outbreaks or other microbe related mysteries. We will apply much of the information that we learned in the first parts of the class to problem solving in much the same way that a field scientist would.
This class is designed for undergraduate students interested in learning how to keep the world free of disease - both real and imagined.