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

单纯疱疹病毒(HSV)感染人类，导致零星出现唇疱疹或生殖器疱疹。HSV感染的严重并发症，包括脑炎和脑膜炎，对移植患者、接受化疗的个人和新生儿可能是致命的。要了解单纯疱疹病毒感染是如何导致这些疾病的，关键是要了解病毒是如何在体内的单个细胞中生长的。这项提议旨在研究直径不到千分之一毫米的单纯疱疹病毒单个病毒颗粒是如何在细胞内组装的。这项研究将使用经过改造的病毒来进行，这些病毒含有彩色标记，在显微镜下会发光。这使得可以在活细胞中观察和跟踪单个病毒。通过这种方式，病毒通过实验室培养的细胞内部的旅程可以使用延时显微镜进行追踪。这种方法将使我们能够解决病毒结构在单个细胞中如何以及在哪里结合的根本问题。由此得到的答案将被应用于了解人类宿主中的病毒感染。

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.