An Infectious Personality: A Conversation with Virologist Don Ganem, Part 2 of 2

By Jeff Miller

Photo of Dan Ganem

Dan Ganem

Don Ganem, MD, fancies himself a microbe hunter. And who can argue with this self-assessment?

In the first part of my conversation with this noted virologist and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, we talked about Kaposi's sarcoma and his decision to abandon the pursuit of basic science for what we might call human science, the kind that targets the causes of disease.

In this second half of our Science Café discussion, we turn to how genetics, microbiology and bioinformatics are fusing into a new evaluative science, what this means for everything from prostate cancer to the common cold, and how finding new viral causes of disease could revolutionize our definition of health and illness.

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Related Links

Ganem Lab
UCSF's DeRisi and Ganem Cited as "Modern-Day Virus Hunters"
UCSF Today, August 22, 2006