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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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"Viral Gene Circuits: Simple Model Systems and a New Spectrum of Antiviral Targets"
Leor S. Weinberger, PhD
Associate Investigator
Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology
Associate Professor of Biochemistry & Biophysics
University of California, San Francisco
Viral gene circuits are bounded by many of the same design constraints as electrical circuits (e.g., signal-to-noise ratio) but rapidly mutating viruses, like HIV, evolved unique mechanisms to circumvent these circuitry barriers. These adaptations are essential to the evolutionary fitness of viruses and offer targets for novel antiviral therapies. I will describe two viral circuit adaptations, the first in HIV (Weinberger & Weinberger, Cell, 2013) and the second in the human herpesvirus CMV (Teng et al., Cell, 2012), the leading cause of birth defects and transplant rejections. I will also discuss very recent work on disrupting and exploiting these circuit architectures for new therapies (Dar et al. Science, in press).
