| Biography | |
|---|---|
 Prof. Haitao Yang Tianjin University, China |
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| Title: Structural and functional studies of drug targets from Zika virus | |
| Abstract: Zika virus (ZIKV) can cause severe neurological pathologies such as neonatal microcephaly and Guillain-Barre syndrome. ZIKV contains a single-stranded, positive-sense RNA genome, which encodes 3 structural proteins (C, prM/M, and E) and 7 non-structural proteins (NS1, NS2A, NS2B, NS3, NS4A, NS4B, and NS5). The capsid (C) protein is responsible for encapsulating the RNA genome. NS1 plays an important role in viral replication and immune evasion.NS3 protease (NS3pro) is essential for proteolytic processing of its polyprotein to enable viral replication, which requires the activation by NS2B. The NS3 helicase exhibits intrinsic nucleoside triphosphatase activity, which then provides the chemical energy to unwind viral RNA replication intermediates to facilitate replication of the viral genome together with RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (NS5). The essential roles these viral proteins play in the viral life cycle make them attractive targets. We carried out systematic structural and functional studies of these drug targets, which can help develop therapies against ZIKV infection. | |
