NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2018

Marceau Joshua O, Fayetteville AR

Investigators

Abstract

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2018, Broadening Participation of Groups Under-represented in Biology. The fellowship supports a research and training plan for the Fellow that will increase the participation of groups underrepresented in biology. This funding will directly fund a Native American (Salish) Postdoc research project. Virus research is fundamental in the understanding of life and evolution. Viruses have evolved together with their natural hosts and an established virus/natural host pair make a good model system to study these interactions. This project will focus on the study of a newly discovered mouse herpesvirus (murine roseola virus) which can be used to gain insights into the viral lifecycle of an understudied genus of viruses (roseolaviruses) and has broad applications to the study of other emerging human and animal viruses. One of the most ubiquitous viruses found across multiple taxa of animals are those of the family Herpesviridae. These viruses are widely distributed and are found in both invertebrates and vertebrates. Many of the herpesviruses can coexist within their natural host without killing the host organism and some species of herpesviruses are reported to be capable of integration into host chromosome. Despite the prevalence of herpesviruses across the animal kingdom, there are basic questions about several of the clades of herpesviruses that remain unanswered. For the roseolaviruses, transmission of virus between cell types and the impact of sub-lethal infection on cell function remain a mystery. The purpose of this project is to further investigate a recently described murine roseolavirus (MRV). The project will define (1) tissue tropism and replication kinetics (2) changes in morphological, electrophysiological, immunological characteristics in infected cells, and (3) employ a recombinant roseolavirus to determine the viral and host factors that govern species specificity. The results of these experiments will define baseline parameters in the virus/host infection model that can be perturbed to: (1) study virus host interactions that drive viral lifecycle and host immune responses. (2) Define tissue tropism, replication kinetics and associated diseases in MRV/Mouse model to offer insight into herpesvirus/human infection. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.