Professor Kay Choi, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry, has been awarded a $2.3 million National Institutes of Health grant to study flavivirus replication, how it can be stopped, and the implications for antiviral therapies.
Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry Kay Choi
Dengue, according to the World Health Organization, is a viral infection that threatens half the world's population. The virus family that causes Dengue, flavivirus, also causes other serious infections and disease around the world: yellow fever, Japanese encephalitis, and West Nile virus, to name a few.
Kay Choi, a professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry within the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University Bloomington, is investigating how these viruses replicate and spread, and how their replication could be disrupted to prevent infection in the body.
Dr. Choi, a structural biologist, focuses on how the 3D structures of viruses, viral RNA and more impact every part of a cell's functioning. She was previously a faculty member at the University of Texas Medical Branch for 15 years before moving to IUB.
The National Institutes of Health is interested in the medical implications of her research and has funded the Choi Lab for the last decade, and this new $2.3 million R01 grant will provide another 5 years of funding, so they can answer these questions.
Throughout the course of their research, the Choi Lab will try to find out how flaviviruses identify their own RNA genome in the cell and how they use the viral RNA structure to make more of their own RNA, thus replicating.
Flavivirus genomes function as messenger RNA (mRNA) in the host cell, allowing it to easily make proteins within the host. The mRNA is a copy of a gene which can then be translated into a protein molecule and expressed, in this case infecting the host.
"Because this RNA is essential for replication," said Choi, "if we do know the RNA structure and how they interact, then we can design a molecule that prevents the interaction and thus viral infection."
She also indicated that a new approach could be developed with additional exploration and research.
"There are a lot of inhibitors targeting proteins but not that many inhibitors targeting the RNA structure. That's something we'll be interested in developing going forward," Choi said.
As global warming leads to an increase in mosquito populations, flaviviruses have the very real potential to become increasingly common and dangerous to human populations. With no antiviral therapies to combat these viruses, the research that Professor Choi and her lab produce could lead to breakthroughs in flavivirus therapies for a host of illnesses.
In addition to her lab's 5 year NIH grant, she was also awarded an R21 NIH grant that funds the lab's study of HIV RNA for 2 years. This grant is based on her lab's recent publication in Nature Communications.
