U.S.-U.K. Cooperative Research: Structural Studies of Furoviruses

这项为期三年的奖项支持范德比尔特大学的杰拉尔德·J·斯塔布斯和苏格兰作物研究所的T·迈克尔·威尔逊在美英合作。他们的研究目标是在分子细节上确定呋喃病毒的三维结构。该项目与斯塔布斯博士对各种不同、无关的螺旋植物病毒结构的研究有关。FuroVirus具有独特的遗传结构、病毒宿主相互作用和传播方式，以及与其他病毒的低水平外壳蛋白序列同源性。序列比较表明，FuroVirus的RNA结合与其他螺旋病毒有很大的不同。这些病毒的结构对于理解宿主-病毒相互作用的性质、特异性、媒介传播和蛋白质-核酸相互作用将是重要的。这位美国研究人员将他在结构生物学方面的专业知识带到了这次合作中。这位英国研究人员在病毒学方面的专业知识和他对呋喃病毒的研究也补充了这一点。该项目将促进我们对螺旋植物病毒分子结构的理解，并最终将用于抗病植物的应用研究。

This three-year award supports U.S.-U.K. collaboration between Gerald J. Stubbs of Vanderbilt University and T. Michael Wilson of the Crop Research Institute in Scotland. the objective of their research is to determine the three- dimensional structure of furoviruses in molecular detail. The project is related to Dr. Stubbs research on the structure of a wide variety of different, unrelated helical plant viruses. Furoviruses have unique genetic structures, viral host interactions and transmission modes, and low levels of coat protein sequence homology with other viruses. Sequence comparisons indicate that furovirus RNA binding is very different from that of other helical viruses. The structures of these viruses will be important in understanding the nature of host-viral interactions, specificity, vector transmission, and protein-nucleic acid interactions. The U.S. investigator brings to this collaboration his expertise in structural biology. This is complemented by the U.K. investigator's expertise in virology and his research on furoviruses. The project will advance our understanding of the molecular structures of helical plant viruses and will eventually be used in applied studies of disease resistant plants.