Previous Virtual Virology Seminars

Date:  Wednesday 23 October 2024

Host: Prof. Clare Jolly - UCL

Title: The cell biology of virus infection: attack versus defence

• Dejan Mesner - HIV-1 signalling drives T cell permissivity to infection
• Matthew Whelan - Visualising HIV-1 infection and nuclear pores in primary T cells
• Ann-Kathrin Reuschl - Overcoming defences:  SARS-CoV-2 vs innate immunity

Date:  Wednesday 19 June 2024

Host:  Prof Jan Rehwinkel and Lab, University of Oxford

Title: Type I interferons – from induction to action

• Jan Rehwinkel - MDA5 guards against infection by surveying cellular RNA homeostasis
• Henry Blest - HSV-1 employs UL56 to antagonise expression and Function of cGAMP channels
• Lizzie Horton - IFI44: linking interferon signalling and red blood cell homeostasis?

Date: Thursday 17 April 2024

Host: Prof Mike Malim and Lab, King's College London

• Peter Hill - Relapsing invasive non-typhoidal Salmonella infections: regulatory genomics of host-pathogen interactions
• Vincenzo Torraca - Controlling persistent infection and antimicrobial resistance in Shigella
• Joe Wanford - Regulation of virulence in hypermucoid Klebsiella pneumoniae
• Charlotte Odendall - Interferon: Tug of War between Host and Pathogen

Date: Wednesday 20 March 2024

Host: Prof Wendy Barclay and lab, Imperial College London

• Amalie Rasmussen - Identifying the cellular regulators of Influenza A virus genome replication
• Dorothee Reuss - Modelling the outcome of coinfections with SARS-CoV2 and seasonal influenza viruses
• Jay Zhou - Experimental challenge of humans and animals – what have we learnt about respiratory virus transmission?

Date: Wednesday 21 February 2024

Host: Prof Greg Towers and Towers Lab UCL

Title: Uppers and downers: drugs for viral modulation

• Kate Morling - Novel HIV-1 capsid inhibitors drive innate immune sensing.
• Lydia Newton - Cyclophilin A-degrading PROTACs inhibit HIV-1. 
• Dara Annett - CycloVect inhibits IFITM3 and enhances stem cell gene therapy.

Date: Wednesday 24 January 2024

Host: Professor Mala Maini and lab from UCL

Title: Antiviral immunity at the UCL Institute of Immunity & Transplantation

• Leo Swadling - Cross-reactive T cell specificity in SARS-CoV-2 outcome 
• Lucy Cooper - Interferon regulation of B cell antiviral immunity 
• Mariana Diniz - Immunotherapy to optimise therapeutic vaccination in HBV 
• Alan Zhuang - Circadian regulation of HBV and other viruses

Date: Wednesday 13 December 2023

Host: Professor Mike Malim and lab from KCL

Title: Innate Immunity, Viral Evasion and Host Disruption

• Rocio Martinez-Nunez - UPF1 restricts rhinovirus replication and is required for the antiviral response
• Hannah Mischo - Through the backdoor— viral interference with mRNA expression
• Rui Galao - A case study on the longest known chronic SARS-CoV-2 infection in a immunocompromised individual in UK
• Melissa Kane (University of Pittsburgh) - Effects of the cyclophilin homology domain of RanBP2 on HIV-1 infection and Mx2 activity

Date: Wednesday 13 September 2023

Host: Professor Ravi Gupta and lab, University of Cambridge

• Petra Mlcochova - Much Ado About the Cell Cycle: Cyclin D3 restricts SARS-CoV-2 envelope incorporation into virions and inhibits viral spread 
• Bo Meng - SARS-CoV-2 spike N-terminal domain modulates viral entry and fusogenicity   
• Nerea Irigoyen - The translational landscape of Zika viruses, more than just a polyprotein

Date: Thursday 22 June 2023

Host: Dr Lucy Thorne, Imperial College London

Title: Three Early Career PIs from Imperial College London

• Daniel Goncalves Carneiro - Coding Biases and the Recognition of Non-Self RNA
• Aileen Rowan - HTLV-1 and T Cell Tumours: A Rare Chance to Study Virus-Driven Cancer Evolution in Humans
• Laura Martin-Sancho - Defining the Cellular Landscape of Viral Restriction using Systems Biology

Date: Thursday 05 March 2020

Host: Prof Paul Lehner (Cambridge) and his lab

Title: Viral Silencing and Immune Evasion

• Marta Seczynska - What do we know about HUSH-mediated transcriptional repression?
• Liane Dupont - Are unintegrated human lentiviruses silenced by HUSH?
• Dan Greaves - Locus-specific Proteomics Identifies Latent EBV-specific Silencers

Date: Thursday 30 Jan 2020

Host: Jason Mercer (UCL) and his lab.

Title: Introduction: “The Ins and Outs of Poxvirus Infection”

• Laura Pokorny: Studying vaccinia virus binding and fusion using a minimal model system
• Susanna Bidgood: The Poxvirus Lateral Body Proteome: Characterising enigmatic structures
• Moona Huttunen: Vaccinia virus hijacks ESCRT-mediated multivesicular body formation for virus egress
• Artur Yakimovich: Viruses versus Machines: Deep Learning to Analyze Host-Pathogen Interactions

Date: Thursday 28 November 2019

Host: Prof, Ian Humphries, Dr Rich Stanton, Dr Eddie Wang, and others.

Title: CMV Research in Cardiff

Date: Thursday 31 October

Host: Dr Clare Jolly

Title: Introduction: HIV and CD4+ T cells

• Ann-Kathrin Reuschl: HIV turns T cells into remainers
• Dejan Mesner: The enigma of lentiviral Nef
• Tafhima Haider: The tale of the Env cytoplasmic tail

Thursday 16 May 2019

Host: Prof Ian Goodfellow, Cambridge

Title: Noroviruses - the perfect pathogen

• Luke Meredith - Generation of novel tools for the study of immune responses to noroviruses and viral entry pathways
• Jia (Luca) Lu - Noroviruses subvert the core stress granule component G3BP1 to promote viral VPg-dependent translation
• Myra Hosmillo - Utilisation of intestinal organoids as tool to study human noroviruses

Thursday 28 March 2019

Host: Dr John Briggs, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge.

Title: Assembly, maturation and evolution of retroviruses - insights from cryo-EM.

Thursday 28 February 2019

Host: Prof Stuart Neil, KCL

Title: 'TRIM25 and ZAP – antiviral suppression of CpG dinucleotides in RNA viruses'

• Chad Swanson: Introduction: suppression of CpGs in RNA virus genomes
• TRIM25 and ZAP target the Ebola virus ribonucleoprotein complex
  • Rui Pedro Galao: TRIM25 and ZAP mediate interferon-induced restriction of Ebola virus
  • Harry Wilson: Mechanistic insights into the targeting of the EBOV vRNP by TRIM25
• Irati Antzin Anduetza: Context and position dependent Inhibition of HIV-1 replication by CpG dinucleotides in the viral genome
• Mattia Ficarelli: Identification of an essential cofactor for ZAP-mediated suppression of HIV-1 containing clustered CpG dinucleotides

Thursday 22 November 2018

Host: Dr Serge Mostowy, LSHTM

• Sina Krokowski: Septins recognise and entrap dividing bacterial cells for delivery to lysosomes
• Julia Pfanzelter (The Francis Crick Institute): Septins suppress the release of vaccinia virus from infected cells
• Vincenzo Torraca: Use of zebrafish to study septin-mediated cellular immunity
• Vanessa Sancho-Shimizu (Imperial College London): Herpes encephalitis: a human genetics perspective

Thursday 13 September 2018

Subject: 'Real-time molecular epidemiology for outbreak response'

• Ian Goodfellow: University of Cambridge: Setting up field laboratories in outbreak conditions – a personal perspective.
• Kirstyn Brunker -  University of Glasgow: Field-deployable genomic surveillance to guide rabies elimination.
• Andrew Rambaut – University of Edinburgh: Genomic epidemiology of outbreaks and epidemics – insights from the Ebola virus epidemic.
• Nick Loman – University of Birmingham: Future perspectives, ARTIC, nanopore sequencing.

Thursday 17 May 2018

Host: Dr Leo James

Title: 'How does HIV carry out reverse transcription inside the closed capsid?'

• David Jacques, UNSW Sydney: When too many structures is barely enough: What (we think) we’ve learned by comparing HIV and SIV capsids.
• Till Böcking, UNSW Sydney: How to tweak HIV capsid stability: Control of uncoating kinetics revealed by single-molecule imaging
• Donna Mallery, MRC LMB, Cambridge: IP6 is an HIV pocket factor that regulates capsid assembly and disassembly

Thursday 15 March 2018

Host: Prof Mala Maini, University College London

• Dr Laura Pallett: Targeting liver-resident T cells
• Alice Burton: Can we harness the B cell response to HBsAg?
• Dr Kerstin Stegmann: Do NK cells have antiviral potential in HBV?
• Dr Mariana Diniz: Immunotherapeutic strategies in the adeno-HBV model

Thursday 18 January 2018

Host: Early Career Investigators Session:

• Will McEwen (Cambridge): Redirecting the antiviral Fc receptor TRIM21 against toxic host proteins
• Dalan Bailey (Pirbright Institute): Structure guided identification of a pathogen with pandemic potential
• Katrina Lythgoe (Oxford): Evolution of chronic viruses within and between hosts

Thursday 16 November 2017

Host: Early Career Investigators Session:

• Chris Illingworth (Cambridge): Evolution on sub-phylogenetic timescales: Measuring influenza reassortment within a human host
• Naomi McGovern (Cambridge): Human mononuclear phagocytes - from foetus to adult
• Petra Mlcochova (UCL): A novel aspect of Macrophage biology: learning from the great opportunist HIV-1

Thursday 20 July 2017

Host: Prof Mike Malim, King's College London

• Darja Pollpeter: Deep sequencing of HIV-1 reverse transcripts reveals the multifaceted anti-viral functions of APOBEC3G
• Luis Apolonia: Host proteins involved in early steps of HIV-1 infection
• Matt Dicks: Unraveling the mechanism of MX2 mediated inhibition of HIV-1

Thursday 18 May 2017

Host: Early Career Investigators

• Pierre Maillard, University College London: Unmasking the antiviral activity of RNA interference in mammalian cells
• Carlos Maluquer de Motes, University of Surrey: Poxviruses and the ubiquitin system: Cullin' innate immunity
• Ben Longdon, University of Exeter: Virus host shifts

Thursday 23 March 2017

Host: Prof. Judy Breuer, University College London

• Prof. Judy Breuer. Genes trees and variants; making biological sense of viral genomics
• Juliana Cudini. Within host viral diversity; comparing CMV with RNA viruses
• Chris Ruis. Hiding in plain site: What drives norovirus pandemics?
• Dan Depledge. The Forever War - New insights into host and viral transcriptomics during alphaherpesviral latency

Thursday 23 February 2017

Host: Prof. Martin Allday, Imperial College London

• Dr Kostas Paschos: Combining ChIP-­‐seq data and gene expression profiles reveals general principles of EBNA3-­‐mediated gene regulation during EBV latency.
• Dr Quentin Bazot: Inhibition of cyclin-­‐dependent kinase inhibitors (CDKI) by EBNA3A and EBNA3C in EBV-­‐infected/transformed B cells: mechanisms and biological consequences.
• Christine Styles: EBNA3A and EBNA3C have co-­‐evolved to epigenetically suppress the B cell-­‐to-­‐plasma cell differentiation pathway, favouring persistence in memory B cells.

Thursday 19 January 2017

Host: Prof Jan Rehwinkel, University of Oxford

• Jan Rehwinkel: Introduction – Nucleic Acid Sensing by Innate Receptors
• Jonathan Maelfai: Sensing of viral and endogenous Z-RNA by ZBP1/DAI induces necroptosi
• Antonio Gregorio Dias Junio: Zika virus and type I interferons

Thursday 15 December 2016

Host: Dr Marcus Dorner, Imperial College, London.

• Marcus Dorner: Studying human-tropic infectious diseases using human xenograft models and tissue engineering
• Ana Maria Ortega-Prieto:  Evaluating single-cell host/pathogen interactions in 3D microfluidic human liver cultures
• Jessie Skelton: Innate immune responses to HIV infection in humanised mice

Thursday 17 November 2016

Early career investigator session:

• Joe Grove (UCL): Why is hepatitis C virus entry so complex?
• Goedele Maertens (Imperial): Host determinants of delta-retroviral integration
• Trevor Sweeney (Cambridge): Understanding the translation landscape at the host pathogen interface

Thursday 20 October 2016

Hosts: Peter Stockley, University of Leeds and Reidun Twarock, University of York

• Introduction: Novel RNA regulated assembly mechanisms in single-stranded RNA viruses
• Peter Stockley: Probing packaging signal mediated assembly mechanisms in viruses infecting bacteria, plants and man
• Reidun Twarock: The mechanism and evolutionary consequences of packaging signal mediated assembly and further extensions to Hepatitis B virus and HIV

Thursday 22 September 2016

Host: Prof Wendy Barclay, Imperial College London

• Jason Long: Defining Host range barriers that limit avian influenza polymerase in human cells
• Wendy Barclay and Hui Li: Understanding the severity of zoonotic avian influenza viruses
• Daniel Goldhill: Measuring the error rate of influenza polymerase to track pandemic evolution
• Anika Singanayagam: The balance between pH stability of influenza HA protein, transmission and virulence
• Wendy Barclay and Rebecca Frise: Counting influenza transmission

Thursday 21 July 2016

Host: Michael Way and Antonio Postigo, Francis Crick Institute

• Dr Antonio Postigo: Vaccinia induces a cytoplasmic DNA damage response to facilitate replication
• Dr Xenia Snetkov: The role of endocytic signalling networks in the release of Vaccinia virus

Thursday 16 June 2016

Host:  Prof. Greg Towers, Infection and Immunity, UCL

• Dr Jane Rasaiyaah:  HIV-1 Capsid regulates DNA synthesis by forming a regulated electrostatic nucleotide channel
• Dr Katsia Bichel: Use of solution state NMR to understand how HIV-1 Capsid-cofactor interactions regulate infectivity
• Dr Maria T. Rodriguez Plata: HIV-1 infection and innate sensing in primary CD4+ T cells
• Dr Becky Sumner: HIV-1 Vpr antagonises innate sensing of viral DNA

Thursday 19 May 2016

Host: Dr Ravi Gupta, Infection and Immunity, UCL

• Dr Ravi Gupta: 'HIV-1 Drug Resistance following global scale up of antiretroviral therapy'
• Dr Katherine Sutherland: 'Mechanisms of resistance to HIV protease inhibitors'
• Dr Petra Mlcochova: 'SAMHD1 regulation by cell cycle explains HIV-1 Vpx independent replication in macrophages'

Thursday 25 February 2016

Host: Peter Cherepanov, Francis Crick Institute

• Peter Cherepanov: “Role of chromatin structure in retroviral integration"- Introduction
• Dan Maskell: The mechanism of nucleosome capture by the retroviral preintegration complex
• Paul Lesbats: Role of capsid in integration of spumaviruses

Thursday 21 January 2016

Host: Dr Ian Taylor, Francis Crick Institute

• Dr Ian Taylor: Introduction: "Structural biology of retrovirus assembly, restriction and cellular defense evasion”
• Neil Ball: Structural insights into PFV Gag assembly
• Sarah Caswell: Structural and mechanistic investigation of SAMHD1 retroviral restriction
• David Schwefel: Counteraction of SAMHD1 restriction by the accessory protein Vpx

Thursday 19 November 2015

Host: Dr Jason Mercer, LMCB UCL

• Dr Jason Mercer: The Double Life of the Vaccinia Dual Specificity Phosphatase H1
• Corina Beerli:  Vaccinia virus induced cell motility
• Rob Gray: VirusMapper: modelling vaccinia structure with super-resolution microscopy

Thursday 22 October 2015

Host: Prof Gavin Screaton, Imperial College

• Prof Gavin Screaton: Study of Dengue Virus infection: toward antiviral and vaccine design

Thursday 28 May 2015

Host: Professor Paul Lehner, University of Cambridge.

• Nick Matheson:  Mapping the plasma membrane proteome in HIV infection
• Dick van den Boomen:  CMV encoded US2 and US11 as viral degradation hubs for immunoreceptors
• Iva Tchasovnikarova:  Genetic screens identify a novel epigenetic repressor complex

Thursday 26 March 2015

Host: Prof Charles Bangham, Imperial College

• Prof Charles Bangham: HTLV-1 – regulation of clonality and latency.
• Michi Miura: Applying CRISPR to test the function of CTCF in HTLV-1
• Hiroko Yaguchi and Anat Melamed: HTLV-1 modifies higher-order structure of host chromatin

Thursday 26 February 2015

Host: Dr Stuart Neil, King’s College London School of Life Science and Medicine

• Dr Toshana Foster: Innate antiviral restriction of HIV-1 entry
• Dr Gregory Berger: Modulation of proinflammatory signaling and DNA repair pathways by lentiviral Vpr proteins
• Ms Julia Weinelt: Differential antiviral activities of human tetherin isoforms

Thursday 22 January 2015

Host: Prof Gavin Wilkinson, Cardiff University

• Rich Stanton: HCMV - building a wildtype virus
• Peter Tomasec: MEGAproteomics! All the cool kids are doing it
• Ian Humphreys: Cytokine Regulation of Immunity to Cytomegalovirus

Thursday 20 November 2014

Host: Prof Ian Goodfellow, University of Cambridge.

• Dr Armando Arias: Favipiravir, a broad-range antiviral nucleoside, can drive virus extinction in vivo through increased mutagenesis.
• Dr Ed Emmott: Norovirus modulates cellular protein translation to impair the immune response to viral infection
• Dr Lucy Thorne: Harnessing the Cellular miRNA machinery to Probe Norovirus Tropism

Thursday 15 May 2014

Host: Mike Mailm, Dept of Infectious Diseases, King's College London.

• Katie Doores: The HIV glycan shield as a target for broadly neutralizing antibodies
• Els Henckaerts: Molecular mechanisms of a nonpathogenic virus
• Maria Teresa Catanese: The cell biology of HCV infection: entry and persistence

Thursday 20 March 2014,

Host: John Sinclair, Division of Medicine, University of Cambridge

Joint title: Human cytomegalovirus latency: host/cell interactions and identification of novel targets with a view to eliminating latently infected cells

• Prof John Sinclair: Setting the scene
• Dr Emma Poole: Changes in cellular gene expression during latency
• Dr Mark Wills: Immune responses to latent infection
• Prof John Sinclair: Therapeutic targeting of latent infection

Thursday 16 January 2014

Host: Geoff Smith, Department of Pathology, University of Cambridge

• Prof Geoffrey Smith: How does vaccinia virus form a plaque?
• Dr Rebecca Sumner: Innate immune evasion mechanisms of vaccinia virus and their contribution to virulence and immunogenicity
• Dr Michela Mazzon: Reprogramming of cell metabolism by vaccinia virus: a mechanism and role for the stabilisation of the transcription factor HIF-1α

Thursday 20 June 2013

Host: Steve Goodbourn, Division of Basic Medical Sciences, St. George's (University of London)

• Prof Steve Goodbourn: Interfering with interferon; viruses fight back
• Dr Craig Ross: Structure of interferon-inducing PAMPs generated by paramyxovirus infections
• Dr Kay Childs: Regulation of RNA helicases by paramyxovirus accessory proteins