Sanghyun Lee^1,*

¹Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, Division of Biology and Medicine, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA

^*Corresponding author.

Oftentimes some of the best results come from disagreements where one side thinks the other is outlandish. There was a white board in Herbert (Skip) Virgin’s lab, where I started my postdoctoral training in 2015 at Washington University (WashU). On the white board was a list of the most controversial debates in the lab, named “The Lunch Bets.” For each topic, lab members, including the principal investigator (PI), placed their bets by putting their initials under “yes” or “no” to show whether they agreed or disagreed with a written hypothesis. Both Skip and his trainees were eager to win the lunch bets and a meal and were passionate to experimentally prove that their hypothesis was true. Among several questions was the first, which stated: “Murine norovirus (MNoV) productively infects intestinal epithelial cells.” I placed my initials (S.L.) under “yes,” and this is how I began my journey on norovirus cell tropism during my postdoctoral training (see Figure 1A).