Some very good news today and want to share this with this group first. About 4 years ago my research focused on the differential virulence of the various species of Ebola (Zaire. Sudan, Bundibugyo, Tai Forest, and Reston). The Ebola protein VP35 is a major player in virulence but there wasnt enough difference in the translated protein to account for the difference in the outbreak CFR. My thought was to locate a viral-miRNA in the untranslated (UTR) region and found what appeared to be a characteristic stem loop in the 5 UTR between the nucleoprotein and VP35 segment and called it the Pandora element as it is only seen in the Zaire strain, not the others. This was presented at the 6th International Conference on Filoviruses (Filo 2014) conference in May. This last week, a lab in China proved it biochemically. We are still a long way out from doing an RNAi knockout to see if that improves outcome but it is promising. My sincere thanks to Dr. Zhangs lab for his biochemical analysis and confirmation. Good night and sleep well,
Posted on: Wed, 08 Oct 2014 07:58:50 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015