By Fr. Sean McDermott
As churches start back, there are still a lot of questions from clergy and laity regarding the nature of this virus and the safest way to come together again. We are blessed at All Saints to have Fr. Gene Godbold serve us as a deacon and as an in-house virus specialist. We asked him to give a talk to our parish on the virus and help answer these sort of questions.
Fr. Gene received a BS with a major in chemistry (USC), a PhD in biochemistry and biophysics (UNC) and spent four years as a postdoctoral fellow (supported by the NIAID) at UVA in the division of infectious diseases studying a protozoan parasite. Afterward, he spent two years as an assistant professor teaching undergraduates molecular & cellular biology. Since 2002 he has worked in biodefense, specializing in the molecular toolkit of parasites that cause diseases in humans (bacterial, viral, protozoal), principally by cataloging what they do to host immune defenses. For the last 2.5 years he has been documenting these for the Intelligence Advanced Projects Activity (IARPA) in the service of developing software that can assess how "bad" a sequence is. The presentation below is the result of his research from the last two months and is adapted from a talk he gave his colleagues. You may download a pdf of the powerpoint slides here. Enjoy!
Fr. Sean McDermott is a Curate at All Saints Anglican Church in Charlottesville, VA and Editor in Chief of Earth & Altar.