Understanding substrates of viral 3C/3C-like proteases

About the project

About the Project In this project, you will be working to understand how viruses such as coronaviruses, caliciviruses and picornaviruses interact with infected cells, focusing on substrates of viral proteases. You will learn molecular virology, cell culture assays, and LC-MS/MS proteomic methods alongside bioinformatic analysis in R. Many of the viruses disrupting society today are distantly related: these include SARS-CoV-2, the agent behind the COVID-19 pandemic, and norovirus which causes epidemics of gastroenteritis. These viruses are members of the coronavirus and calicivirus families, and along with the picornavirus family share common elements, including an enzyme: a 3C or 3C-like protease, which cleaves viral and cellular proteins. In this project, you will build on the labs prior work using cutting edge LC-MS/MS methods (e.g. Meyer et al. 2021 Nature Comms.) to understand which cellular proteins are cleaved by viral 3C or 3C-like proteases, and use molecular biology and virology approaches to understand the role of these proteins during authentic viral infection with a range of viruses. You will gain skills in R-based bioinformatic analysis, and ultimately characterise the pro- or antiviral roles of identified substrates. By understanding which host proteins are required for efficient viral infection, we can learn new ways to stymie virus replication that may ultimately have the potential to be developed into host-targeting antivirals. For this project, you will be based in Ed Emmott’s lab, part of the Centre for Proteome Research, and the Department of Biochemistry, Cell & Systems Biology at the University of Liverpool ( https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/people/edward-emmott , https://emmottlab.org/ ). Email your CV, cover letter, project title to Prof. Emmott at e.emmott@liverpool.ac.uk . As this project is unfunded, please indicate how you plan on funding your studies.

Research areas