File photo: Dale Hoskins, Professor Emeritus, Northern Arizona University s School of Communication
Credit Northern Arizona University
Hoskins taught broadcast journalism at NAU for more than 30 years, receiving the Jack Clifford Excellence in Broadcast Education Award from the Arizona Broadcasters Association Foundation. He held a BA from Baylor University, an MFA from Texas Christian University and a PhD from North Texas State University. Hoskins retired from teaching in 2015. In an interview with KNAU in 2006, he said small local news organizations are vital to all communities, especially in rural areas.
First of all, what is an antibody and why is it important?
Antibodies are proteins, they’re these Y shaped proteins, and they have these highly diverse binding sites at the tips of the fork of Y… But we’ve got a huge variety of antibodies that recognize different binding sites and that means these binding sites can recognize different proteins…. What they do is they recognize foreign antigens, foreign proteins, they bind to them and they prevent them from doing whatever is harmful for your body. …
This study you were looking into cross-reactive antibodies, what does that mean?
That means a single type of antibody with a particular type of binding site can bind to and recognize multiple different viral species or types of viruses. In this case, we’ve got what we call endemic coronaviruses. These are coronavirus that have been circulating within the human population for a while, they’re generally associated with pretty mild symptoms, kind of a common cold. Then we ha