Congratulations to Alex for recently defending her BPhil honors thesis project, “Developing an efficient binding assay to quantify molecular interactions with the profilin protein,” which she conducted in Dr. Andy VanDemark’s lab. She graduates from the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences this weekend and officially becomes a MPH student in the Department of Infectious […]

Our collaborators Alex Guseman and Angela Gronenborn proposed that lectins in the Oscillatoria agardhii agglutinin (OAA) family could bind SARS-CoV-2 S protein and inhibit infection. Using S pseudotyped lentivirus, Chandra showed that one OAA lectin, BOA, could potently inhibit infection (2 nM EC50). This was confirmed in collaboration with the Duprex lab and David Martinez […]

Richa’s paper from when she was in the lab has been published.  She had a lot of help from Youya as well as Chris and Doug. The aim of the study was to determine why a specific polymorphic amino acid substitution in HIV-1 reverse transcriptase (RT), V179I, arises in people living with HIV and treated […]

Doug Fischer presented his SARS-CoV-2 project in today’s Center for Vaccine Research (CVR) Seminar Series. He presented data on producing reporter SARS-CoV-2 viruses using BACs and investigation of post-entry replication steps of WT and variant viruses using reverse genetics and confocal and super-resolution imaging. Great job, Doug!

Approximately 38 million people worldwide are infected with HIV and they are 20 times more likely to become ill with tuberculosis (TB) than uninfected individuals. HIV co-infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), the etiologic bacterium that causes TB, is the leading cause of death among people living with HIV. In collaboration with the laboratories of Ling […]

Zac has had an exciting semester!  First, he recently published a first author review article in the journal Viruses entitled “Disassembling the Nature of Capsid: Biochemical, Genetic, and Imaging Approaches to Assess HIV-1 Capsid Functions” in which he summarizes the methods used to detect and measure the function of HIV-1 capsid in vitro and in […]

Chandra’s study, featuring Mariana’s MPH thesis work, has been published in the Journal of Virology. Chandra characterized two replication-competent HIV-1 reporter viruses: one encoding the bioluminescent protein nanoluciferase (nLuc) and the other encoding a near-infrared fluorescent protein called iRFP670 (or iRFP). After characterization in human CD4+ T cells, Chandra infected NSG mice engrafted with human […]

Today Emerson defended her MS thesis entitled “Characterization of HIV-1 capsid-binding host proteins during infection.” She did an outstanding job and it is clear she learned so much during her time here, including learning to independently perform confocal microscopy! One of her aims was featured in our recent mBio paper. We will miss you in […]

Mariana successfully defended her MPH thesis, “CG Dinucleotide Codon Removal Improves Expression of HIV-1 Reporter Viruses in Humanized Mice,” in the Department of Infectious Diseases and Microbiology in the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health! She worked hard to get great data while finishing a heavy graduate course load and her practicum as […]

Zhou’s paper is in press at the journal mBio. He developed highly inclined and laminated optical sheet (HILO) live-cell microscopy to track HIV-1 and host protein complexes. Here is an example of one of his movies, showing red virus particles moving along white microtubules in a cell:   Using live-cell imaging and virology techniques, Zhou […]