Award details

Studentship: Defining the arthropod SUMOylation system and its functional role during arbovirus infection

Reference	BBS/E/I/00001866
Principal Investigator / Supervisor	Professor Peter Mertens
Co-Investigators / Co-Supervisors	Professor Peter Mertens
Institution	The Pirbright Institute
Department	The Pirbright Institute Department
Funding type	Research
Value (£)	45,249
Status	Completed
Type	Institute Project
Start date	16/09/2013
End date	31/03/2017
Duration	42 months

Abstract

IAH Studentship:There are over 100 medically important arboviruses such as yellow fever, dengue and Chickungunya. Often they cause only mild flu-like symptoms and are limited, in part, by the cell’s interferon response but, when able to subverts this response, the virus can spread to target organs leading to more sever outcomes.This ability to both subvert the host cell’s machinery and promote a favourable intracellular environment is doubly complex for arboviruses as they encode only a few proteins with which to effect it and must do so in two distinct cell types; mammalian and arthropod.In mammalian cells, arbovirus induce cellular responses that results in virus clearance and cell survival or virus replication and cell death while in arthropod cells they establish an equilibrium that promotes a persistent state of infection necessary for continued virus transmission.Clearly, identifying mechanisms by which arboviruses affect their environment is fundamental to understanding the infectious process and host response.One mechanism recently shown to influence both is protein SUMOylation. SUMOylation is a dynamic modification that alters a proteins function and/or sub-cellular localisation. The recently identified response of SUMO to virus infection has significantly contributed to our understanding of viral pathogenesis in mammalian cells. Little is known, however, about SUMO and arboviruses and nothing about SUMOylation in the arthropod cell.This project will investigate the roll of SUMOylation in modulating arbovirus infection of mammalian and arthropod cell. The student will first establish cellular systems with a disrupted SUMO profile in which the phenotype of virus growth is altered.This will provide the basis for their research into understanding how mechanisms of SUMOylation in arbovirus infection of both mammalian and arthropod cells. In addition the student will produce, for the first time, data that described the SUMOylation machinery in arthropod cells.

Summary

unavailable

Committee	Not funded via Committee
Research Topics	Microbiology
Research Priority	X – Research Priority information not available
Research Initiative	X - not in an Initiative
Funding Scheme	X – not Funded via a specific Funding Scheme

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