The world is full of viruses—from Ebola and measles to smallpox and flu— known to us largely because of the diseases they cause. These pathogens have shaped human history and continue to pose major global health challenges. The tenOever Lab is dedicated to understanding these viruses and their diseases.
"Virus Ninja" is the long-time nickname of Dr. tenOever, and the fun way that we think about our outreach efforts beyond the lab. While science in its purest and most advanced forms is complicated, part of the impact of our research is in connecting it with the rest of the world. Thus, our fearless leader isn't our only Virus Ninja—our whole team, our colleagues in other labs, our students, and anyone interested in our work can be Virus Ninjas too! The Virus Ninja Program is about giving people the information and tools to understand our work and its impacts so they can, either through working with us or by applying the knowledge in their own life, wage a winning battle against viruses and their negative impacts on the world.
Each summer, the tenOever Lab invites curious and motivated high school students to join us in fun, real-world science projects. For example, students in past programs have collected insects from nature and extracted their RNA, breaking it down into fragments of genetic code that expose the “A's, U’s, G's, and C's”. Students learned how to re-assemble this code using a computer algorithm to identify continuous strands including thousands of RNA “letters”. This RNA code predominantly represents instructions to make the insect it came from, but also embedded within its sequence are traces of viruses that have never been observed before. Students in the Virus Discovery Program can choose virus components of interest to build using synthetic biology and even name their unique, identified virus.
The tenOever Lab endeavors to help people understand our core practice of Biology through Virology. The battle against viruses and the diseases they cause is complicated and requires specialized knowledge and training—but it is possible for everyone to gain a better understanding of how viruses work, how virologists like us safely conduct our research, and how our discoveries can help support global health.