Skip to main content

Daniel Davis – Four Way Interview

Daniel M Davis, PhD, is The Director of Research in the Manchester Collaborative Centre for Inflammation Research – a research institute funded by the University of Manchester, AstraZeneca and GSK. Prior to this, he was a Professor of Molecular Immunology at Imperial College London, UK and Head of the Immunology and Infection Section at the South Kensington Campus. Professor Davis pioneered the use of novel imaging techniques to help visualize key molecular components of the immune response. His work helped establish new concept of how immune cells communicate with each other and how they recognize disease. Dr Davis’ book The Compatibility Gene – was published by Penguin in 2013 and is on the longlist for the 2014 Royal Society Winton Prize.
Why science?
I studied physics first because nothing beats the scale over which physics works – from the formation of stars to what goes on inside atoms. But after my PhD, I decided that it’s perhaps more interesting to think about how life works. So I went to Harvard for a few years to research the immune system. For me, all kinds of science are fascinating – but the added bonus of thinking about the immune system that it can seed new ideas for medicine.
Why this book?
There are genetic differences between people and misunderstanding human variation has led to some of the greatest tragedies in history. A big message of my book is that our greatest genetic differences – the genes that vary the most from person to person – are in our immune system. And it is essential that we have this diversity; this enormous variation is essential to how the human body fights disease. My book is also about individuality on a different level. It’s also a story showing how different scientists contribute – in different ways – to our understanding of nature.
What’s next?
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed discussing the immune system with the public. I especially enjoy festivals, like the Hay Festival which I’ve loved for years but this was the first time I got to speak there, and my family’s really looking forward to Latitude in a couple of weeks. So I want to keep talking about The Compatibility Gene a while longer before I commit to another book project but undoubtedly, there are many fascinating stories in immunology that I think deserve more attention.
What’s exciting you at the moment?
My own research is in imaging the way in which immune cells detect signs of disease. My lab team uses new kinds of light microscopes that can detect individual protein molecules in cells. It’s wonderful as we can now study how immune cells work on a nano-metre scale. With this, we can answer specific long-standing questions – like how do immune cells kill cancer cells – but also, just by watching, we can discover entirely new unexpected phenomena about the behaviour of immune cells.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Luna: Moon Rising (SF) - Ian McDonald ****

I'm not the natural audience for this book. Game of Thrones l eaves me cold - and it's hard not to feel the influence of GoT (and a whole lot of Dune )   underneath a veneer of science fiction and the trappings of a South American drug cartel in the cod-medieval family power battles and chivalric details. There are even dragons (of a sort). I'd be really sad if the future did involve this sort of throwback feudalism. However, remarkably, despite this I found Luna: Moon Rising kept me engaged. The fact is that Ian McDonald can put together a good plot with intricate machinations, which is enough to carry the reader through what can be a bewildering collection of characters. The two page scene-setter saying who did what to whom at the start was useful, but I could have done with family trees for the main family as I was constantly forgetting who was who - especially easy as McDonald endows many families with characters with the same first initial (e.g. Ariel and Al...
Post a Comment
Read more

Adventures of a Computational Explorer - Stephen Wolfram ***

Stephen Wolfram, the man behind the scientist's mathematical tool of choice, Mathematica, plus a whole host of other software products, including the uncanny Wolfram Alpha knowledge engine, is undoubtedly a genius of the first order. In this book, we get an uncensored excursion into the mind of genius - which is, without doubt, a fascinating prospect. The book consists of a collection of essays and speeches that Wolfram has produced over the last ten to fifteen years, covering an eclectic range of topics. Like all such collections, the result is something that lacks the coherence of a book with a narrative that runs through it, inevitably introducing a degree of repetition and a mix of interesting and not-so-interesting topics - but there's likely to be something to catch the attention anyone who is into computing or mathematics. One of the most interesting pieces is the opening one, where Wolfram describes being a consultant on the SF movie Arrival. He seems to hav...
Post a Comment
Read more

The AI Paradox - Virginia Dignum ****

This is a really important book in the way that Virginia Dignum highlights various ways we can misunderstand AI and its abilities using a series of paradoxes. However, I need to say up front that I'm giving it four stars for the ideas: unfortunately the writing is not great. It reads more like a government report than anything vaguely readable - it really should have co-authored with a professional writer to make it accessible. Even so, I'm recommending it: like some government reports it's significant enough to make it necessary to wade through the bureaucrat speak. Why paradoxes? Dignum identifies two ways we can think about paradoxes (oddly I wrote about paradoxes recently , but with three definitions): a logical paradox such as 'this statement is false', or a paradoxical truth such as 'less is more' - the second of which seems a better to fit to the use here.  We are then presented with eight paradoxes, each of which gives some insights into aspects of t...
Post a Comment
Read more