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Prof Simon Lovell, Prof David Robertson
Applications accepted all year round
Self-Funded PhD Students Only
About the Project
The greatest impediment to producing effective treatments for HIV is the high rate of viral evolution. HIV’s rapid evolution represents a significant challenge for all types of HIV therapy, including drug therapy and vaccine design.
Although the degree of sequence diversity is extremely high, it is not without limit. In particular mutations have the potential to disrupt the protein structure and so can have a negative effect on the structural integrity, and therefore function, of any of HIV’s constituent molecules. Fortunately, the likely effect of a given substitution can be predicted from the known characteristics of the structure and the particular side chain substituted. We therefore aim to predict whether a given evolutionary trajectory is viable or not, and so predict the likely evolution path of HIV. This will be done using computational models of protein evolution and protein structure.
Although the degree of sequence diversity is extremely high, it is not without limit. In particular mutations have the potential to disrupt the protein structure and so can have a negative effect on the structural integrity, and therefore function, of any of HIV’s constituent molecules. Fortunately, the likely effect of a given substitution can be predicted from the known characteristics of the structure and the particular side chain substituted. We therefore aim to predict whether a given evolutionary trajectory is viable or not, and so predict the likely evolution path of HIV. This will be done using computational models of protein evolution and protein structure.
Funding Notes
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