TUT Talks Science: HIV

So, as anybody who's read my little introduction will know, the first thing I shall talk about on this blog is HIV. The first reason for this is presumably fairly obvious - HIV is a truly devastating virus that has ended far too many lives already and affected many times more lives than that. From a much less humanitarian point of view, it is also rather interesting. To understand how HIV works, one needs really to understand what it affects: the immune system - and the immune system is truly fascinating. One also needs to understand a fair bit about genetics and cell biology. So I foresee this blog being broken down into a number of sections, which will probably be like chapters in a book. First I will try to explain how the immune system works and then I will probably need to explain a fair bit about genetics, cell biology and DNA and then we can put the pieces together and understand what HIV actually does and how it works. After the science is over, I will try and say a few things about the very real and very consequential human aspect and might end up talking about what we as humans can actually do.

Now, the disclaimers. I am not a doctor, I am not remotely well-versed in issues such as virology, immunology, epidemiology, genetics or any of the things I'm going to be so presumptuous as to talk about. This isn't just meant as a warning, although it is partly that. Obviously you shouldn't take anything I tell you as gospel, I can't accept responsibility for any harm that befalls you if you do, I cannot guarantee that this blog is nut free, do not try this at home, etc. etc. But as well as that, I am always looking for correction. Feel free not to be unpleasant about correcting me, but I'm a big boy and I can take it if you want to be. But anyway, at the bottom, there is a space for comments. If I get something wrong: tell me and tell anyone else who reads this, too, because I don't want to mislead people. I am writing this as much to learn as to teach, so I may well make mistakes. None will be deliberate and I fully intend that everything I tell you will be accurate and informative, but some of it might not be.

The next thing to say is about my sources, referencing and the like. I intend this blog to have the flavour of something a bit like a textbook. It isn't a textbook by any means, obviously, but I am trying to explain HIV and many of the things I will discuss are "common knowledge" within the fields they belong to. I'm not writing an academic paper, so I hope you will forgive me for not cluttering my paragraphs with little superscript numbers or names of authors in brackets.

But credit must be given where it is due, so at the end of this post I will include a list (which I intend to keep fairly up to date) of all the sources I've found useful. This is my own work, but obviously I didn't discover any of these things for myself, everything I write about I've learned from what other people have written. I am indebted to the material contained in the references I am about to give you and I will be doing nothing more than explaining things which someone else has explained to me. As, I think, with all explanations - and with teaching in general - it's not really possible for me to give a full account of the resources that have helped mold my explanations and my own explanation will be heavily influenced by what I have read. All I can do is acknowledge my debt and try to point you in the direction of some of the most important resources.

References

Provided below are links to some sites I've found particularly useful and other sources and references. Readers will note that I've made good use of Wikipedia. I think Wikipedia's a fantastic source, but you can decide for yourselves how much you want to trust me, armed with this knowledge. I've tried to put them in some kind of order, but many of these links belong in more than one section. Additionally subsections should not be imagined to be somehow seperate. The links themselves don't really appear in much of an order. I've tried to put more general links at the top in places but really the ordering is essentially chronological.

General information about HIV

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV

http://www.tht.org.uk/. This is the website of the Terrence Higgins Trust, an HIV/AIDS charity which also concerns itself with other matters of sexual health. I find them, and their website, to be of substantial value and interest.

"HIV and Me" is a two-part documentary presented by Stephen Fry which first aired on BBC 2. It is available on YouTube, at time of writing. It is a brilliant documentary which is fantastically sad, but really does bring a lot home about the human cost of HIV.

The Immune system

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immune_system

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immunological_memory

The innate immune system

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innate_immunity

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern_recognition_receptor

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathogen-associated_molecular_pattern

Inflammation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflammation

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/287677/inflammation. This is a truly brilliant article containing really everything that matters on the topic of inflammation, all of it explained succinctly and straightforwardly.
http://youtu.be/FXSuEIMrPQk. This is a "Khan Academy" video about inflammation. "Khan Academy" really is a great resource and in some ways an inspiration for me. It is well worth a look.

The complement system

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complement_system
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_complement_pathway

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_complement_pathway

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lectin_pathway

http://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/14278/is-the-complement-system-a-part-of-innate-or-adaptive-immunity. Stack Exchange is a remarkably useful website for asking questions and receiving answers. I also go by the name of "Au101" and you can see the question I asked and the answer I got here.

Mast cells

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mast_cell
http://www.kegg.jp/kegg-bin/show_pathway?hsa04664
http://wenliang.myweb.uga.edu/mystudy/immunology/ScienceOfImmunology/Hypersensitivitydiseases.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCER1
http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fimmu.2012.00130/full

http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/2040/2/Sabban,_Sari.pdf