biology

Sonja M. Best

Sonja M. Best is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Sonja M. Best rather than just read about it. In short: Sonja Marie Best is an Australian-American virologist. She is chief of the innate immunity and pathogenesis section at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories.

Key takeaways

Sonja M. Best belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Sonja M. Best to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Sonja M. Best from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Sonja Marie Best is an Australian-American virologist. She is chief of the innate immunity and pathogenesis section at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories. Best researches interactions between pathogenic viruses and the host immune response using flavivirus as a model.

Education Best earned a B.S. with majors in immunology and microbiology and a second major in zoology from University of Adelaide. She received her Ph.D. in biochemistry and molecular biology from the Australian National University where she studied the pathogenesis of myxoma virus. In 1999, she conducted her postdoctoral research at Rocky Mountain Laboratories (RML) on the complex role of apoptosis in the replication of parvoviruses.

Career Best stayed at RML as a research fellow and in 2007, she became a staff scientist. She investigated virus-host interactions involved in flavivirus pathogenesis. It was during this time that she developed her interests in innate immunity and the molecular mechanisms utilized by flaviviruses to evade these critical host responses. In 2009, Best established an independent laboratory as a tenure-track investigator to expand her studies on interactions between pathogenic viruses and the host immune response. She is chief of the innate immunity and pathogenesis section. Best investigates the mechanisms underpinning early immune activation after infection with RNA viruses and how emerging viruses evade these early responses to cause disease. Her virus models include emerging flaviviruses (such as Zika virus and encephalitis) and filoviruses (Ebola virus).

Awards and honors In 2011, Best was awarded a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers for her work on flavivirus suppression of innate immune responses.

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Sonja M. Best

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Sonja M. Best claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Sonja M. Best before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Sonja M. Best ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Sonja M. Best

In research: Sonja M. Best appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Sonja M. Best in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Sonja M. Best is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 21st-century American biologists, 21st-century American women biologists, 21st-century American women civil servants, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Sonja M. Best outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Sonja M. Best in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Sonja M. Best means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Sonja M. Best out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Sonja M. Best in simple terms?

Sonja Marie Best is an Australian-American virologist. She is chief of the innate immunity and pathogenesis section at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories.

Why does Sonja M. Best matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Sonja M. Best?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Sonja M. Best.