Herpesviruses are highly successful pathogens that cause disease in animals and humans. In particular, the alphaherpesvirus subfamily includes significant veterinary pathogens many of which are designated notifiable diseases by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
Understanding host responses to pathogen infection is critical for guiding the development of intervention strategies. Changes in gene expression are commonly observed upon infection, as exemplified by numerous transcriptomic studies.
Vaccinia virus is the live vaccine that was used to eradicate smallpox. After smallpox eradication, VACV has been exploited to build vaccines against other diseases and continues to be studied to better understand virus interactions with the host cell and the immune system.
Noroviruses have an impact of >$60 billion pa, yet we have no vaccines or therapeutics. This project will use a combination of molecular and biochemical approaches to dissect norovirus VPg-primed RNA synthesis.
Cell division faithfully partitions the genomic information between the two daughter cells and errors in this process have been implicated in many human diseases.
Biotic stresses often occur on short timescales, making rapid response crucial for survival of both host and pathogen. Cells respond to stress by regulating gene expression at multiple steps but especially transcription, translation and protein turnover.
RNA methylation is a reversible post-translational modification to RNA that epigenetically numerous biological processes. The biological and molecular functions of RNA methylation are generally very poorly understood, both in normal and pathological biological processes.
