Lab Research Focus
Human Immunodeficiency Viruses Types I and II both cause AIDS in infected individuals, but differ in their geographic distribution, protein structure and antigenicity, nucleotide sequence and genomic organization, and in vivo pathogenicity. My laboratory is interested in the origin and evolutionary history of these viruses, their relationship to other non-pathogenic primate lentiviruses, as well as their mechanisms of disease induction in the infected host. We have established a broad-based research program which pursues the following topics: (i) HIV genetic variability and the impact of this variability on vaccine design and therapies; (ii) genetic and biological analysis of naturally occurring attenuated or highly pathogenic variants of HIV; (iii) isolation and molecular characterization of new SIV strains from naturally infected primates, and (iv) structure/function studies of HIV/SIV gene products, including envelope, integrase and the accessory proteins Vpr, Vpx and Vif.
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