Viral Fugacity In Vitro and In Vivo

Featuring Jianzhong Wu, Ph.D.

Professor, Chemical and Environmental Engineering

University of California, Riverside



Free and open to the public

 

Abstract:

Packaging and release of genomic materials from a viral capsid are intimately related to strong electrostatic interactions among a large number of biomacromolecules in a crowded cellular environment. Because the biological process involves multiple time and length scales, it is a formidable task to describe viral activity and replication from a molecular perspective. In this talk, I will present a theoretical procedure to describe molecular driving forces for genome packaging and ejection in a DNA virus and in a para-retrovirus under in vivo and in vitro conditions. I will discuss also the potential of the theoretical method for quantification of non-specific multi-body forces important for understanding the molecular basis of viral packaging and morphogenesis.



About the Speaker:

Dr. Jianzhong Wu is currently a Professor of Chemical and Environmental Engineering and a cooperating faculty member of Applied Mathematics at the University of California, Riverside. He received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, and M.S. and B.E. in Chemical Engineering and B.S. in Applied Mathematics from Tsinghua University, Beijing. His research is mainly concerned with development and application of statistical-mechanical methods, in particular density functional theory, for describing the microscopic structure and physiochemical properties of soft materials.