We continue our 'My First Paper' Campaign, showcasing researchers and their research - with Alan Radford, a Professor in Veterinary Health Informatics from IVES.
Your name and your area of research.
Alan Radford, virus evolution in animals
What was the title of your first paper and who was it submitted to?
The name of my paper was 'The use of sequence analysis of a feline calicivirus (FCV) hypervariable region in the epidemiological investigation of FCV related disease and vaccine failures.' You can access it here.
How would you explain what this paper was about to your grandparents?
As we all know from COVID, sequencing viruses allows us to give them a fingerprint, to track where they came from. In my first paper I developed the method to do that for an important cause of flu-like signs in cats called feline calicivirus.
What was the most significant thing for you about that paper?
Before the paper was published, people felt that widely used vaccines might be an important cause of this disease in those rare kittens that became ill after their first vaccination. We were able to show this was not the case.
What advice would you give to others about submitting their first paper?
Never write anything you can’t completely justify. To say “we show x is better than y” is subtly different to saying “we show x is likely to be better than y”.