Date of Award

2014-01-01

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Biological Sciences

Advisor(s)

German Rosas-Acosta

Abstract

It is of huge concern the possibility that at some point in the future we may face a new pandemic involving a highly pathogenic virus due to our current preventive and treatment options to fight this viral disease. The main reason for such limitations is the ability of the virus to go over constant antigenic shifts and drifts on its viral surface proteins HA and NA. The constant mutations that affect this virus cause the need of developing new vaccines for each influenza season. Periodically, the World Health Organization (WHO) reports that around 10% of the world population gets infected of which 25,000 to 50,000 persons die.

Our current research involves the study of the Influenza A Virus (IAV) viral proteins and the effects that a novel tool created by our lab, the "ASL", could have during viral infection. On the work presented in this thesis we show that this tool has the ability to specifically attach to the IAV NS1 protein and increase its levels of SUMOylation. With the implementation of this tool we seek to provide information about the importance that the role of SUMOylation could have on influenza viral infections. In addition, we seek to have a better understanding of the molecular mechanisms by which SUMOylation regulates NS1's function, therefore potentially leading to the identification of new targets for the development of innovative anti-influenza therapies.

Language

en

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

File Size

56 pages

File Format

application/pdf

Rights Holder

Jeanette Cecilia Gonzalez

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