Haley Jordan

Hi! I'm a fifth year PhD candidate in Dr. Jonathan Schlebach's lab. I currently collaborate with Dr. Tuli Mukhopadhyay lab in which I look at different ways alphaviruses regulate protein translation. I love working in a membrane proteins lab but my collaborative project has really sparked my interest in virology. Ultimately, I am really excited to help communicate science to the non-science community because everyone should be able to understand and benefit from scientific research.

Entries by Haley Jordan

Viral variants: What are they, and how do they form?

Posted August 7, 2021 by Haley Jordan

[A picture of virus particles each in a different color to represent a different Sars-CoV-2 variant.]

Because the COVID-19 pandemic has been raging for almost 2 years now, most people have heard of the different viral variants that threaten the effectiveness of full protection with vaccines. This topic can be confusing to anyone who is not familiar with viruses or virology. This article will: 1) help you understand what viral variants are, and 2) explain where they come from. Viruses rely on host organisms (e.g., people and/or animals) to make more copies of themselves so that they can infect more hosts. However, hosts typically mount an immune response to clear a virus, which creates a challenge for viruses to overcome…

Cicada mania at IU

Posted June 26, 2021 by Haley Jordan

[A picture of someone holding a cicada in their hand.]

If you’ve walked around Indiana University (or frankly, any woodsy area in Indiana) recently, you’ve probably seen the 17-year Brood X adult cicadas on sidewalks, long grass, trees, and buildings. If you are reading this post and you’ve been in Bloomington for a while, you may also remember the time this happened 17 years ago. Or, you might be like me, and this invasion has sparked a curiosity of wanting to learn more about cicadas…

A quick summary of the immune system and the COVID-19 vaccine

Posted March 13, 2021 by Haley Jordan

[This image shows a person’s hand, and a syringe is being held between the person’s fingers. The needle of the syringe is pointed towards a round pathogen cell with small projections.]

There are many strategies when it comes to developing a vaccine, but the idea behind all of them is similar. Vaccines are designed to pose a foreign invader, such as a virus or bacterium, to your adaptive immune system without causing you to be sick. Our immune systems are quite amazing, which also makes them quite complex. Here, we will focus only on a few aspects that are important for understanding vaccine development…

COVID–19: What is it? What you should know about it?

Posted April 4, 2020 by Haley Jordan

[Coronavirus is a spherical virus with small suction-cup-like attachments on the surface.]

Obviously, we have all heard about COVID–19, the novel coronavirus outbreak that originated at a seafood market in Wuhan China. There is a LOT of information out there about COVID–19 but there are also still many open questions that we are desperately looking for answers to. I wanted to tackle this topic from a scientific approach, so what exactly is COVID–19? The Coronavirus family is characterized as an enveloped positive strand RNA virus, much like the SARS-coronavirus that infected people in 2003, but with a slightly different genome. What does that mean? Let’s break it down…