Characterisation of herpes simplex virus morphogenesis by tracking the virus tegument through the secretory pathway

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Herpes simplex virus (HSV) infects humans causing the sporadic appearance of cold sores or genital herpes. Serious complications of HSV infection, including encephalitis and meningitis, are potentially fatal in transplant patients, individuals undergoing chemotherapy, and newborn babies. To understand how HSV infection causes these diseases it is essential to find out how the virus grows in individual cells in the body. This proposal aims to study how single virus particles of HSV, that are less than one thousandth of a millimetre in diameter, assemble themselves inside the cell. The research will be carried out using viruses that have been modified to contain coloured markers that light up under a microscope. This allows individual viruses to be observed and followed in living cells. In this way, the journey that viruses make through the inside of a cell grown in culture in the laboratory can be traced using time-lapse microscopy. This approach will allow us to address the fundamental questions of how and where in a single cell the virus structure comes together. The resulting answers will then be applied to understanding virus infection in the human host.