On Friday, we said goodbye to Richa Dwivedi, a postdoctoral fellow who spent 1 1/2 years in the lab. She was a co-author on one paper and we expect her to have a first author publication soon. Best of luck, Richa!

Our collaborator Peijun Zhang’s laboratory recently published a new assay to automate correlative light and electron microscopy (CLEM) of HIV particles inside cells (see workflow below). CLEM is a method to image small fluorescent particles (in this case, fluorescently labeled HIV made by Zhou Zhong in the Ambrose lab) inside cells on electron microscopy grids […]

Zandrea was selected to co-organize the 2020 Cold Spring Harbor Retroviruses meeting with our friend Dr. Ron Swanstrom. We hope to see you there. It should be another fun meeting with great science and friends!  (If you’re lucky, Dr. John Coffin will give you a lesson on how to eat a lobster.)

Our friend and collaborator, Dr. Masa Yamashita, identified a transmitted/founder HIV-1 strain (CH040) that is resistant to a small molecule inhibitor of HIV-1 capsid (PF74). His lab identified mutations in this viral isolate that alter capsid stability and prevent an innate immune response. In our lab, Doug Fischer performed the HIV-1 capsid permeabilization assay for […]

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 […]