Vaccines are so much cooler than I thought they were. There are a lot of aspects of bacteria that aren’t very well understood. The basics about our immune system are as follows. White blood cells interact and tract down the “bad guys” aka bacteria. They find the bacteria once they get inside our bodies through cuts, blood, our breath, or spoiled food and then kill them to keep us healthy. GRF Tyler works with bacteria to try and find new ways to vaccinate us. He is trying to replicate the sugars on the outside of bacterium cells and use them on proteins to then put into vaccines to fight against a disease that is very hard to pronounce. It originates from wild rabbits and is very rare but was created in the form of a bio-weapon during World War 2 so the defense agency is funding his research. Vaccines can either use live bacteria in small doses or reengineered bacteria that is less harmful than the live version and injected into our bloodstream to create antibodies that jumpstart the process of making memory cells that our body can use if we come into contact with the actual infection later on. Although his research was way over my head I was fascinated by what he was studying and creating and the advancements in medicine he is a part of. Thank you for your hard work Tyler!