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Research
Interest:
My goal is to investigate
the chaperone activity of Feline
Immunodeficiency Virus (FIV) nucleocapsid protein (NC) in vitro and in
vivo. NC
is an important component of many retroviruses such as HIV. FIV is a
medically
relevant pathogen, as it is similar to HIV in structure and
pathogenesis.
Additionally, it provides an animal model in which study of
retroviruses will
be beneficial to the development of vaccines and treatments for human
retroviral diseases.
Both wild-type and mutant NC will be assessed for its nucleic acid
chaperone
activity using gel-shift annealing assays, sedimentation assays,
single-molecule stretching (in collaboration with Prof. Mark Williams,
Northeastern University), fluorescence anisotropy, and FRET-based
assays. Mutant NC will also be
examined to determine the important regions of FIV
NC for
chaperone activity. Finally, in
collaboration with Prof. Larry Mathes (OSU Veterinary Biosciences) in
vivo
studies will be performed in cell culture to examine reverse
transcriptase
activity and RNA packaging ability of the mutant NCs. Results from
these
experiments will provide valuable insight into the mechanism of NC's
interaction with nucleic acids, and could be useful for the development
of
anti-retroviral vaccines.
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