Pipe Dream sat down with Paul Turner, the Rachel Carson professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale University and a faculty member in microbiology at the Yale School of Medicine. His research focuses on the evolutionary genetics of viruses, particularly on bacteriophages and RNA viruses. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Pipe Dream: First off, can you tell me a little bit about yourself and your research?
Paul Turner: “I’m a faculty member at Yale University, and I’m a biologist, especially I study virology. I study a lot of how viruses evolved to overcome problems, but I also study how viruses can solve problems, especially treating disease.”
PD: When you enrolled in the University of Rochester, you originally intended to be an engineer. What made you switch to biology?
PT: “I grew up in a household where my older brother was an engineer — a computer engineer — and he really loved that field. I grew up liking biology more than engineering — I went to school for engineering and then realized how passionate I was about biology, I have nothing against engineering. It’s just doesn’t fit me as well, and I think the major difference for me in engineering is about problem-solving, whereas I consider science [to] kind of be more about dabbling, trying to figure out how the world works, without necessarily a purpose in mind, and that just fit my imagination and motivation better.”
PD: When you were a freshman, would you have expected to be in the position that you are today?
PT: “No, definitely not. I had to learn along the way, even [about] what you could do with a biology degree. I ended up switching into biology, mostly because I was passionate about it and, I got to admit, I was pretty naive. I didn’t think so much about what I would do with the degree. I enjoyed talking with my professors in biology at [University of] Rochester and they told me that, if I wanted to be a scientist or professional scientist, then the way to do it is you go to graduate school in biology, and you do some further training after that, and you could land a variety of jobs, including a professor. My parents are college-educated, you know? It was not as if I was not having encouragement to pick a degree and a career path, but that was not on their radar. They thought of biology in terms of strictly going to medical school. It turns out that I’m less interested in human medicine from the standpoint of studying humans as those species, I’m more interested in a lot of different species on the planet.”
PD: The last COVID-19 pandemic has obviously changed a lot of the ways that we view things. How do you think it’s changed the way that we view RNA viruses?
PT: “A lot of the fears that we’ve had of a pandemic occurring have obviously come true, but let’s just say it’s a lot different living through that than it is predicting it, so I’ve been as surprised as anybody about the struggle that it takes, and especially how long it takes a pandemic to be really at [the] end. They happen quickly at the beginning, but then they really take a long time to fade into the background. So that’s where we still have to have a lot of patience in terms of RNA viruses. Yes, they are overrepresented as problems in pandemics, so I expect that to continue to happen. RNA technology, interestingly, is what’s helping us get through it. So this rise of the mRNA vaccine approaches has been really amazing to me. It’s a lot faster to come up with a solution that way than with traditional vaccines. So, in summary what I’m saying is, yes. RNA viruses will still be a huge problem, but our understanding of RNA and how it could be used in genetics, including in vaccines which is a very different thing — that’s not a virus — but I’ve been impressed about how well we’ve done, and I know a lot of people are impatient. They want it to be over with, but if we were relying on old vaccine platforms, we wouldn’t even be close to where we are.”
PD: Would you say that this [COVID-19] pandemic has made us more prepared for a more dangerous future virus?
PT: “Absolutely, yes. I think it will make us more prepared for our upcoming pandemics, which will certainly happen. It’s [mRNA technology], a faster technology, it’s more versatile. I think it’s pretty optimistic that we could use it for other problems, including current problems that are not pandemics. Things like trying to cure cancer, so it’s a pretty amazing technology. One way to think about it is [that] during tough times when challenges occur, actually, humans are quite good at rallying often with science and technology to solve problems and it sort of hurdles things forward in time. So, I think that’s going to happen as we make our way out of the pandemic. We’re going to realize mRNA vaccine technology, but also other things that we’ve been doing in the last couple of years, are going to help more broadly in science and technology.”
PD: Do you think microphage therapy treatment is the future of viral treatment?
PT: “Yes, so the irony of living in a pandemic and facing a dangerous virus like COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, is that, well, before that, people had been working on viruses to solve problems and the kind of work that we do. You’re basically purposely putting a virus in somebody’s body, but that virus is designed to kill a bacterial invader. It’s not designed to, and it will not do, the person any harm. I thought that could be a tougher message to get across to people, and it’s actually not. I think it is relating a little bit to this rise of technology that we’ve had to do during the pandemic. I think it’s kind of opened the eyes of people to try new things, and what I hope is that that’s the way the public will embrace that. I kind of see that more often than not, when I talk to people and I tell them, ‘Yeah, we’re trying to harness viruses for good to cure infections because antibiotics aren’t working as much,’ and I don’t get responses from them that say, ‘Oh, what are you, crazy? Why would I put a virus in my body?’ It’s more about them understanding that the antibiotic resistance crisis is like a slow-burning pandemic that’s happening. It’s not good, and it’s really increasingly possible that you get a bacterial infection, for which there aren’t many drugs that could handle [that]. In some cases, they’re superbugs and there are no drugs that can handle it.”
PD: How do you think your speech fits into the theme of the talk, “Welcome to Tomorrow?”
PT: “The kind of out-of-the-box thinking that could get us through biomedical problems, disease issues, that’s where my talk fits pretty well. It’s an old idea that predates discovery of antibiotics, but at the time it never took off in popularity. Now that we’re more desperate, people are revisiting it, but they’re not willing to go back to the old idea of phage therapy, and the classic way they understand it has to be updated, so that’s what we’re doing. Taking an old idea, updating it for modern times, especially using particular phages to kill the bacteria, not just any old phage. If you choose the right phage to kill them, you could trick the bacteria into becoming less disease-prone. There’s ways that we use these phages — they kill the bacteria — and when the bacteria evolve resistance to those phages, that’s OK with us, because we’ve ended up changing the bacteria to be less dangerous, or we’ve caused them to be desensitized to antibiotics or less capable of making chemicals that would cause harm of disease in a person, so it’s like a two-edged sword.”
PD: What do you want students to take away from your talk today?
PT: “To, in a sense, be bold about what they want to try to achieve. I think, beyond the message of my colleagues and I trying to look at a big problem — innovate. Try to find a solution that’s better than solutions we’ve had before. One way to think about that is, just believe in your ideas. Don’t be pre-convinced that they’ll work. But believe in your ideas as being worth testing. [It’s] possible to think about life in many ways that same way. No matter what your field is, no matter what it is that you’re trying to do, if it’s the arts, it’s technology, it’s business, it doesn’t matter. But if you are always passionate about something that could be a high-risk high-reward, then you should perhaps think seriously of pursuing it. Don’t let somebody take that dream away from you.”