{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"HPC Hearts & Minds","title":"Ep 3: Ticks, Bites and Parasites","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":2391,"description":"With the memory of a global pandemic still fresh, the world is more aware than ever of how diseases jump from wildlife to humans. In this episode, we sat down with Dr. Siobhon Egan, a research fellow at Murdoch University.\nSiobhon is a molecular biologist and parasitologist who studies the microscopic pathogens that move between species. Her studies at university started in animal health with plans to go down the veterinary pathway, but a deep curiosity for lab work under the microscope changed all that.\nSiobhon has conducted extensive fieldwork in the southwest bush of Australia, navigating the low-yield \"luck game\" of trapping bats, birds, and terrestrial mammals. She later moved from the animal microbiome world to the Australian National Phenome Centre, joining a team that brought expertise from London to study the human gut microbiome.\nShe has personally processed at least 60 of Australia’s 74 native tick species, investigated how a single paralysis tick bite on the East Coast can trigger a lifelong mammalian meat allergy, and is part of a study tracking tick-bite victims for a full year.\nComparing and identifying these pathogens is vital, but historically, researchers could only match DNA sequences locally using small, curated databases. As genomic sequencing costs have plummeted, the volume of samples has ballooned. Today, a single patient’s dataset can easily reach terabytes of data containing millions of complex genetic fragments.\nShe recently had a paper published of a study tracking tick-bite victims for a full year looking at Debilitating Symptom Complexes Attributed to Ticks (DSCATT).\nAs technology has improved, high-performance computing (HPC) has stepped in. Using Pawsey’s supercomputer Setonix, Siobhon’s team can compare massive, complex patient files against every known and unknown sequence in public records, analysing datasets in just a couple of days – a task that would take weeks or even months to attempt on a local computer.\n00:00 Intro:...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/e807B7P8dWYNBNVZXiHGWJEh4wHX8jfEaynZCzpbsNo/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9lZGU5/OGVkYjE3YTlhMDFl/NGIzMTMwYjY5YTI1/OWE0OC5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}