Research Groups
Molecular Virology
Research Interests and Description
Group Leader: Alessandro Marcello, PhDGroup Members
Description of Research
The main focus of the laboratory is the molecular biology of virus-host interactions and the biotechnological exploitation of this knowledge. To pursue these aims the lab takes advantage of different experimental approaches. Great effort is devoted to the implementation of techniques that enable the visualization of virus-host interactions at high resolution and in living cells. During the past few years, the lab, in addition to standard techniques such as FRET and FRAP, has developed a novel method to visualize viral RNAs in living cells. It has been observed, for example, that HIV-1 mRNA biogenesis occurred in discrete foci within the cell’s nucleus (see Figure: yellow spot in the nucleus represents the site of transcription, cyan spots in the cytoplasm are the product of a reporter gene encoded by the same mRNA correctly transcribed/translated). This experimental setting is used to measure the dynamic of HIV-1 RNA transcription and the assembly of factors at the viral promoter in living cells in real time. Proteomic techniques to identify novel host factors that control viral infection as well as chromatin conformation capture (3C) and 3D FISH techniques to study the sub-nuclear organization of HIV transcription are being implemented. Similar approaches are also being applied to the study of Flaviviruses like tick-borne encephalitis and hepatitis C replication in the cytoplasm. In summary, the laboratory has developed a platform of techniques that has enabled the study of the virus-host crosstalk from single protein-protein interactions to the 3D dynamics of host and viral components in living cells.
Recent Publications
Dieudonné, M., Maiuri, P., Biancotto, C., Knezevich, A., Kula, A., Lusic, M., Marcello, A. 2009. Transcriptional competence of the integrated HIV-1 provirus at the nuclear periphery. EMBO J. 28, 2231-2243
Alberti, R., Klatka, T., Longoni, A., Bacescu, D., Marcello, A., De Marco, A., Gianoncelli, A., Kaulich ,B. 2009. Development of a Low Energy X-ray Fluorescence System with Sub-micrometer Spatial Resolution. X-ray Spectrometry 38, 205-209
Hoenninger, V.M., Rouha, H., Orlinger, K.K., Miorin, L., Marcello, A., Kofler, R.M., Mandl, C.W. 2008. Analysis of the effects of alterations in the tick-borne encephalitis virus 3'-noncoding region on translation and RNA replication using reporter replicons. Virology 377, 419-430
Miorin, L., Maiuri, P., Hoenninger, V.M., Mandl, C.W., Marcello, A. 2008. Spatial and temporal organization of tick-borne encephalitis flavivirus replicated RNA in living cells. Virology 379, 64-77
