During the process of making our live game about infectious diseases in collaboration with scientists from UCL, we discovered some fascinating things about llamas. These surprising facts led us to make llamas the stars of the project and we wanted to share some of these amazing llama stories with you before Llama Outbreak! comes to London at on 27th and 28th of May.

Llamas, and their relatives camels and alpacas, have an unusual immune system. This was discovered by accident in the 1980s by some students doing experiments with camel blood. Their antibodies are much smaller than ours and using these antibodies, scientists can make nanobodies. Nanobodies are special antibody fragments that are hugely useful in all kinds of biological research including making rapid diagnostic tests for infectious diseases. The nanobodies are very small and can therefore get into nooks and crannies of viruses that larger antibodies can’t access. This means that they can bind very tightly to viruses. They are also stable to changes in temperature and pH. Our science friends at UCL and i-sense use nanobodies to develop highly specific and sensitive diagnostic tests for infectious diseases like HIV and flu, making these tests very accurate. The llama nanobodies also make excellent, versatile tools  for the laboratory. "Maybe next winter the doctor will use a llama nanobody to tell you whether you've got the 'flu?!"

Come and play the Llama Outbreak! game at Courtyard at Kings Cross on 27th and 28th May where you’ll be able to meet the scientists who use llama nanobodies in their work. Discover the full story on our Projects page: