Postdoctoral researcher and medical bioinformatician, Irina Chelysheva, is a member of the Oxford Vaccine Group. Today, she discusses her work and knowledge regarding vaccine research and development. Press play to discover: How the use of next-generation sequencing technology could be used for developing more efficacious vaccines How the transcriptome of a cell differs from the translatome of a cell, and what type of information is conferred by sequencing each What changes with age in terms of the immune response to vaccines (and why certain vaccinations are scheduled at very specific ages) Chelysheva begins by shedding light on what it means to be a bioinformatician and the important role of bioinformatics in science and research. She also explains how next-generation sequencing can be applied to the area of vaccine research and development. For example, a person’s human leukocyte antigen (HLA) system could play a role in how effectively a vaccine works for them. Sequencing allows you to see the mutations, HLA, and gene expression by performing RNA/ transcriptome sequencing. It also allows you to distinguish between groups of people who have specific genes or pathways activated and groups of people who do not, which can have implications for how a person will react to a vaccine.  Chelysheva also talks about the normal immune response to vaccination and overreactions by the immune system in response to vaccination, and shares the details and findings of her work on vaccines and genetic sequencing. One of the main questions she aims to answer is why T cells might be produced by one organism but not another organism after vaccination. In addition, she discusses why some vaccines fail to work, why they are challenging to develop, her take on a COVID-19 vaccine, Oxford Nanopore Technologies, and more. Check out https://www.ovg.ox.ac.uk/team/irina-chelysheva for more. Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK