About
Wenesday, September 27th, 2023, at 2.00pm
Jules Bordet room
Melanie Ott
Senior Investigator, Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology at the UCSF (University of California San Francisco),
Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology, USA
Invited by Carmen Buchrieser, Mélanie Hamon and Paola Arimondo
“Understanding SARS-CoV-2 Variants through Reverse Genetics”
Abstract:
SARS-CoV-2 continues to circulate with a set of actively evolving subvariants of the Omicron variant. Much attention is focused on mutations in the Spike protein and their immune evasive properties but changes in other structural and non-structural proteins contribute importantly to viral evolution and attenuation. We developed molecular technologies to rapidly and safely assess the functional impact of genome-wide mutations. These include virus-like particles (VLPs), replicons and full-length infectious clones. Here we discuss how signature mutations in Beta, Delta and Omicron variants affect viral fitness and nonstructural and structural protein functions.