Chandra and Zhou presented posters on their work at the Cold Spring Harbor Retroviruses on May 24th. Both had a lot of interested viewers and had great scientific discussions with colleagues. Chandra’s poster was titled “Imaging HIV-1 Transmission and Dissemination in Humanized Mice.” He was very excited to talk to Drs. Tom Hope and Walther […]

Today Doug Fischer became Dr. Doug Fischer as he successfully defended his PhD thesis in the graduate Program in Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine! His thesis is titled “Examination of the Role of HIV-1 Capsid Sequence on Virus Infectivity, Host Protein Interactions, and Capsid Uncoating” and has led thus […]

Today Zhou presented his latest work in our departmental retreat on HIV-1 microtubule trafficking in cells. Good job, Zhou! The retreat was fantastic with 6 research talks from MMG trainees (PhD students and postdoctoral fellows), 2 seminars from invited speakers (Drs. Houra Merrikh and Eva Harris), and a presentation on diversity in science. Speaking of […]

We were lucky to have Dr. Pleuni Pennings come give a seminar in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics this week on the evolution of HIV-1 drug resistance evolution. While she was here, we had a half day think tank with Pleuni and Ling Lin’s lab, during which discussed our projects together on HIV and Mycobacterium tuberculosis co-infection and how the […]

Another part of Kevin’s thesis was published in the Journal of Virology (“Two Coselected Distal Mutations in HIV-1 Reverse Transcriptase (RT) Alter Susceptibility to Nonnucleoside RT Inhibitors and Nucleoside Analogs”). This was an exciting collaboration with the Hughes Lab, in which they identified novel antiretroviral inhibitors that are analogs of the potent non-nucleoside inhibitor (NNRTI) […]

PhD student Doug Fischer published part of his thesis project in the Journal of Virology (“CA Mutation N57A Has Distinct Strain-Specific HIV-1 Capsid Uncoating and Infectivity Phenotypes”). As we still do not understand how HIV-1 infects non-dividing cells, such as macrophages, Doug characterized a virus with a mutation in the capsid protein (N57A) that abolished […]

An image accompanying our recent publication with the Zhang lab was selected for the September 2018 cover of Journal of Virology! Zhou, with the help of Mike Calderon from Simon Watkins’ lab, took this image on the STED3X microscope. Truncation of cleavage and polyadenylation specificity factor 6 at amino acid 358 (CPSF6-358) leads to cytoplasmic […]

We are happy to announce that we have joined the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics in the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine! We are excited to be closer to many of our long-time colleagues, who have been so welcoming to us. We look forward to more exciting interactions and collaborations with these amazing […]

Our collaborative study with the Zhang Lab was published in the Journal of Virology (“Truncated CPSF6 Forms Higher-Order Complexes that Bind and Disrupt HIV-1 Capsid”) showing that a truncated form of the host protein CPSF6 (CPSF6-358) oligomerizes around HIV-1 capsid and is associated with more rapid core uncoating. This truncated protein sequesters HIV DNA in […]

Check out our new article in PLoS Pathogens describing the evolution and persistence of HIV-1 drug resistance in the blood and different tissues. Spoiler alert: the gastrointestinal tract is very different than the blood and lymph nodes! The title of the study is “A Spatio-Temporal Assessment of Simian/Human Immunodeficiency Virus (SHIV) Evolution Reveals a Highly […]