024: Time for Lyme: A Discussion with Dr. Steve Norris
Episode description
Dr. Steven Norris is a Professor at the University of Texas Health Houston, where he studies Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacterium that causes Lyme disease.
Lyme disease is the most common vector-borne disease in the U.S. and it can lead to lifelong debilitating conditions, including arthritis and neurological symptoms. Dr. Norris has been studying B. burgdorferi for many years in his laboratory, and investigated various aspects of how this organism causes disease in infected hosts, including its motility, surface proteins, and plasmids.
Dr. Norris discusses everything you ever wanted to know about Lyme disease, including how people get the disease, the prospect for vaccines and eradication, the difficulty of working with this and other spirochetes in the lab, and his hobby of paleontology.
The MicroCase for listeners to solve is about Wolfgang Schweinsteiger, the German accordion player who fulfills his lifelong dream to go to the Grand Canyon, only to come down with a deadly disease.
Participants:
Karl Klose, Ph.D. (UTSA)
Steve Norris, Ph.D. (UT Health Houston)
Janakiram Seshu, Ph.D. (UTSA)
Rachel Chen (UTSA)