A new lab, with a lot to learn.
I started working in my postdoc lab at the
beginning of June, and now I’m finally feeling settled enough to start doing
things other than reading research papers. Ok, admittedly I started a Muay Thai class a month ago (because
I’m badass) and I’ve done some painting (because I’m not badass I’m actually an
artsy nerdy skinny girl), but I’ve found that creative and physical outlets are
extremely important for my mental health as a scientist. Research is so
mentally exhausting sometimes, and life is all about balance, right? Especially
when you don’t have any friends and the other postdocs are busy with babies
or something.
Now that I’ve gotten a better grasp of my new
field and the directions of my project, I thought I’d tell you about it.
Adenovirus!
My lab studies adenovirus, which is actually
not very different from the virus I worked on in my last lab, polyomavirus.
There are different categories of viruses, and these two are small,
nonenveloped, DNA viruses – meaning, they have a tiny DNA genome (instead of
RNA), and this genome is contained inside a polyhedral shaped “capsid” shell made
up of just a few different proteins.
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I liked the simplicity of this diagram.
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Why would anyone care about adenoviruses?
Well, adenoviruses are important to
understand for a number of reasons, the first one being that they can cause
illnesses. A common problem they cause is respiratory infection in children,
and a different strain of the virus can cause a bad form of pink eye. And like
every other pathogen, they can cause a problem for anyone who is
immunosuppressed.
Another interesting thing about adenoviruses
is that they can be manipulated and used in a helpful way, for gene therapy (where
someone with a genetic disease would be treated with virus that had been
altered to carry a functional version of the gene causing the disease).
A third interesting way that adenovirus might
be helpful is that the virus can be used to kill cancer cells. The idea is that
the virus has to selectively kill the cancer cells but not healthy cells, without
first being taken out by the immune system.
What am I working on?
My goal in the lab is to get a better idea of
the disassembly mechanism of adenovirus. What does that mean? Well, when the
virus finds a cell, and then gets inside, its main goal is to replicate and
make new viruses. In order to do that, it needs to get its DNA inside the
nucleus of the cell. But if you remember, the virus DNA is protected inside a
layer of proteins called the capsid, so the virus capsid has to break apart
somehow to free the virus DNA. This is not a simple task, because the whole
point of the virus capsid is to be very strong and stable so that it can travel
from one person to another during transmission and then through their body. So,
viruses have evolved to interact with specific features inside the cell to trigger
“loosening” of the capsid and subsequent disassembly steps.
Why is it important to understand the virus disassembly process?
Understanding the basic steps of a virus’s
life cycle - how it gets into the cell, comes apart, and gets its DNA into the
nucleus to replicate - is important for a lot of reasons, even if it may not
seem immediately “translatable” to the clinic. One main reason is for discovery
of anti-viral drugs, because these are often designed to specifically stop a
step in the lifecycle such as disassembly. If the virus capsid can’t come
apart, then the virus can’t infect the cell. In terms of gene therapy or cancer
therapy, understanding how the virus interacts with the cell is important so we
can manipulate the immune response and/or figure out how we can target the therapeutic-virus
to specific cells in the body.
Well I think this general overview is good
enough for now. I don’t like overwhelming anyone. Including myself. Back to the
lab bench! Today I’m looking at how the interactions of adenovirus with its
receptor proteins impact its stability, which you can actually look at by just
mixing them together….
