But she has no illusions. In the war between humankind and bugs, she said, the bugs are still ahead. There are far more of them than there are of us.
Bacteria grow very rapidly, and the mutations that arise can be maintained.
For everything we try and do, they can figure out some way around it. What persists are mutants that allow the hosts to survive long enough to spread the pathogens to another host. Payne, an expert in cholera and diseases producing dysentery and diarrhea, is a graduate of Rice University who earned her Ph.D. at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and did postdoctoral work at the University of California at Berkeley. Payne works with Dr. Jaqueline Dudley, a UT Austin virologist, to develop less painful ways to treat cancer. Because the one thing that viruses and bacteria do well is to infect people, Payne said, that makes them excellent delivery vehicles for diseases.