Research Initiation Award: Mechanisms of Interaction of Glyco-gag with Restriction Factors

研究启动奖为历史上黑人学院和大学的初级和中级职业教师提供支持，他们正在建立新的研究项目或重新定向和重建现有项目。预计该奖项将有助于进一步提高教师的研究能力和效率，改善家庭机构的研究和教学，并使本科生参与研究经验。授予萨凡纳州立大学将通过提供实践研究培训和职业发展机会，以代表性不足的少数民族（URM）学生通过强大的导师-学员互动，通过推进生物系的研究能力，并通过增加新的主题和活动在几个类提供显着的更广泛的影响。由于宿主和病毒之间持续的军备竞赛，宿主和病毒都在其基因组中显示出采用的特征。虽然宿主已经产生了限制病毒在感染细胞中复制的限制因子，但一些病毒已经获得了自己独特的辅助蛋白，可以抵消宿主限制因子。最近的研究表明，小鼠γ-逆转录病毒中的一种辅助蛋白可以通过未知的机制对抗两种宿主限制性因子，从而促进病毒的复制，这将为阐明宿主-病毒相互作用的新机制提供有力的工具。该项目的长期目标是阐明宿主-病毒相互作用的详细机制，并确定病毒辅助蛋白如何在细胞和生物体水平上调节病毒复制。该提案旨在识别和表征可以抵消宿主因子的新病毒蛋白，阐明逆转录病毒蛋白如何与宿主因子相互作用，并通过计算分析描述宿主-病毒协同进化。预期的成果将推进对先天免疫和宿主病毒共同进化的基本方面的知识，从而将大大提高对遗传学，病毒学和细胞生物学的理解和推进基础知识。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

Research Initiation Awards provide support for junior and mid-career faculty at Historically Black Colleges and Universities who are building new research programs or redirecting and rebuilding existing programs. It is expected that the award helps to further the faculty member's research capability and effectiveness, improves research and teaching at the home institution, and involves undergraduate students in research experiences. The award to Savannah State University will provide significant broader impacts by providing hands-on research training and career development opportunities to underrepresented minority (URM) students through strong mentor-mentee interactions, by advancing research capability of the biology department, and by adding new topics and activities in several classes. As a consequence of the continuous arms race between hosts and viruses, both hosts and viruses show signatures of adoption in their genome. While hosts have developed restriction factors that limit viral replication in the infected cells, some viruses have acquired their own unique accessory proteins that could counteract the host restriction factors. Recent reports have demonstrated that one accessory protein in a mouse gammaretrovirus can facilitate its replication by counteracting two host restriction factors through unknown mechanisms, and it will be a powerful tool to clarify novel mechanisms in host-viral interactions. The long-term goal of this project is to clarify the detailed mechanisms of host-virus interactions, and determine how viral accessory proteins regulate viral replication at cellular and organismal levels. The proposal aims to identify and characterize new viral proteins that can counteract host factors, clarify how the retroviral proteins interact with the host factors, and describe host-virus co-evolution through computational analysis. The expected outcomes will advance knowledge on fundamental aspects of innate-immunity and host-virus co-evolution, and thus will substantially enhance understanding and advance fundamental knowledge in genetics, virology and cell biology.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.