I am a postdoc at Brooke lab in the Microbiology department. I work on the influenza virus, particularly on investigating the role of Defective Interference Particles (DIPs) in the evolution of the virus. Influenza DIPs are sub-genomic RNAs generated by erroneous replication of the full-length wild-type (WT) genomes during the infection, as a result, they possess a large internal deletion in their genome. Therefore, DIPs cannot be functional on their own and they need to interfere with the WT virus to propagate. I am interested in using the NGS sequencing (Illumina, minION, PackBio…etc), bioinformatics, and experimental approaches to study how Influenza WT virus and DIPs co-evolve at the genomic level, and how this relation can dedicate the infectivity of the virus. This knowledge can provide a better understanding of the influenza virus biology and help in developing a more sustainable vaccine. More about the story can be found in our last pre-print on the (BioRxiv. doi:10.1101/440651).
