Branco Weiss Fellow Since
2022
Research Category
Virology, Structural Biology
Research Location
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, USA
Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA
Background
Organisms synthesize a broad range of proteins that have important functions in cells and drive biological phenotypes. The machinery responsible for making new proteins by decoding messenger RNAs is known as the ribosome and is a key component of cellular life. Viruses, in contrast, employ a parasitic approach and co-opt the ribosomes of their hosts to make viral proteins. The discovery of giant viruses which encode components of their own protein synthesis machinery upends this view and blurs the line between cellular and acellular biology. By studying the mechanisms of protein synthesis regulation during giant virus infection, we can expand our understanding of how new proteins are made and provide insights into how this fundamental cellular process evolved in the first place.
Details of Research
Dr. J. Maximilian Fels will leverage cryogenic electron microscopy to directly visualize how giant viruses interact with and modify the protein synthesis machinery of their hosts throughout the course of infection. Guided by these structural studies, he will determine how control of protein synthesis contributes to viral fitness through the targeted disruption of viral factors that interface with host ribosomes. Dr. Fels will measure the efficiency of viral and host protein synthesis under different infection conditions and establish how giant viruses regulate protein synthesis at the level of individual messenger RNAs. Through these observations of virus-host interactions at the molecular level, he will then be able to show how novel functions in protein synthesis regulation emerge.
