Pirbright: Influenza Virus

Prettier a virus in large.

We visited The Pirbright Institute today; it is one of the institutions that funds the Doctoral Training Programme alongside the BBSRC (Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council), Oxford University, and Oxford Brookes, so they took us on a coach to have a look around and hear about the research going on there. We're going to another partner institution (well, the various institutions at Harwell) tomorrow. 

We spent our time today at the BBSRC National Virology Centre (the new Plowright Building); it is a very modern building (completed this year), and contained many state-of-the-art high-containment labs for research into viruses (especially those affecting livestock). The main atrium was decorated with glass viruses lit by colour-changing lights, and I was rather taken by this influenza virus...

I'm currently fighting a bug, so today has been a little bit overly pathogen-focussed...