07-07-21 Congratulations to Léa Gaucherand for receiving a poster award at RNA 2021 on-line.
06-29-21 Congratulations to Dr. Rachel Levene for successfully defending her thesis on PA-X interacting proteins and post-translational regulation and for her upcoming move to Enanta Pharmaceuticals, where she will be working on drugs against respiratory viruses.
05-05-21 Congratulation to Léa Gaucherand for receiving an F31 award from NIAID! This will support Léa’s studies on the connection between the RNase activity of PA-X and changes in immune pathways.
04-15-21 Congratulations to our former undergraduate intern Rachel Richards for being awarded the Barry Goldwater scholarship https://goldwater.scholarsapply.org/2021-goldwater-scholars-by-legal-state-of-residence/.
03-25-21 Rachel Levene’s article on PA-X instability is out in Journal of Virology. She describes the unexpected rapid turnover of this protein and how it changes depending on the influenza A strain. Congratulations to Rachel also for its selection as a “Spotlight” article.
02-19-21 We have to say good-bye to Tate Tabtieng after 6 years in the laboratory as a student and then postdoctoral fellow 🙁 He has been a mainstay of the laboratory and will be missed. But we are all excited for his new adventures at Generate Biomedicines.
12-01-20 Marta is officially a tenured associate professor! Wow, it’s been quite the journey and unfortunately we cannot celebrate properly, but thank you to all present and past lab members for the hard work!
11-27-20 Good-bye Kathryn! Kathryn is starting a new job at MGH as a lab manager for a brand new lab. Best of luck and thank you for all the hard work here!
09-01-20 The lab is awarded an American Lung Association COVID-19 and Emerging Respiratory Viruses Research Award to study immune evasion proteins in SARS-CoV-2. Excited to start this project in collaboration with the Runstadler laboratory at the Vet School.
08-25-20 Congratulations Rae Daly on receiving the Rosenberg Fellowship! The award is given to starting third year students in recognition of their achievements in the first two year of the graduate program.
07-29-20 We are sad to see our undergraduate thesis student Alvaro Monago Sanchez go but excited for him to continue to pursue his research career in a Master Degree back in Spain. It was a weird year for him to spend time abroad but we were glad of his contribution to the lab and the KSHV/interferon project.
06-01-20 Amrita Iyer, a Tufts university undergraduate, joins out group as part of the Tufts Summer Scholars program. Unfortunately due to the COVID-19 pandemic the lab is closed and her internship in online, but she will nonetheless investigate sequence determinants of RNA degradation by the influenza host shutoff factor PA-X. Wellcome Amrita!
04-08-20 Rae Daly’s PLOS Pathogen Pearl (written with our collaborator Denys Khaperskyy) on regulation of viral host shutoff RNases is out! Read more here.
03-12-20 2nd year Rae Daly passed her qualifying exam with flying colors! Great job Rae! She wrote a proposal on a restriction factor for influenza A virus!
01-29-20 Alvaro Monago Sanchez, an undergraduate student from Universitad Francisco Vitoria in Madrid, joins the lab for his thesis work. He will be setting up a screen for inteferon stimulated genes that regulate KSHV replication. Wellcome Alvaro!
01-16-20 Congratulations Dr. Tate Tabtieng on your PhD! Tate was the lab’s second graduate student and he has become everybody’s point of reference. He will stay on for a some time as a postdoc so we don’t have to miss him yet.
08-05-19 Congratulations Lea Gaucherand on receiving a Dean’s Fellow award! The award is given to starting third year students in recognition of their achievements in the first two year of the graduate program.
08-04-19 Almost 2nd year Rachel Lent passed her qualifying exam with flying colors! Great job Rachel! She proposed a project on dissecting the activity of an antiviral factor during Dengue virus infection.
07-30-19 Matthew’s paper on characterizing the KSHV ORF42 gene is accepted in Viruses. Read more here on how ORF42 is required for efficient virus production, likely by promoting wild-type levels of viral protein production.
07-20-19 Marta wins the Ann Palmenber Junior Investigator award from the American Society for Virology (https://www.asv.org/ann-palmenberg-jr-investigator-award) and gives a plenary talk at the ASV annual meeting.
06-20-19 Wellcome to our new research assistant Kathryn Lasseter and graduate student Saw Htun (Master’s in Biomedical Sciences)!
05-20-19 Wellcome to our new graduate students Rachel Lent (Molecular Microbiology) and Rae Daly (Cellular, Developmental and Molecular Biology). Rachel will join Team KSHV and Rae will join Team Flu.
05-14-19 Congratulations Matthew Butnaru, Ph.D. Matt was the first student to join the lab in May 2014 and he is the first student from the lab to graduate. The end of an era! He will be missed.
04-16-19 Our Cell Reports paper in collaboration with the McCormick lab is out! Read more here on how influenza PA-X usurps cellular RNA processing pathways to control host gene expression during infection. PA-X is an influenza A virus-encoded immunomodulatory protein, with a potential role in specifically controlling host responses that promote lung damage during influenza A virus infection. Here are the authors celebrating at our end:
09-30-18 Lab outing to celebrate the four reviews we got published in the last few months. Listening to storytelling about science at the Story Collider.
09-27-18 Marta’s review together with Karl Munger on the mechanisms of oncogenesis by human tumor viruses – including both direct viral oncogene action and indirect effects is out! https://doi.org/10.1016/j.coviro.2018.09.003
09-24-18 Leo Palmer joins our laboratory as an intern. Welcome Leo! Leo is a student at Roxbury Community College and is interning as part of his coursework.
08-17-18 Almost-2nd-year student Lea Gaucherand passed her qualifying exam with flying colors! Great job Lea! She proposed a project on human papillomaviruses.
08-08-18 Matt’s review on the current state of knowledge on the regulation of viral gene expression in Kaposi’s sarcoma-associated herpesvirus infected cells is out! Available at this link: https://rdcu.be/3YeD
08-02-18 Tate’s work on caspase regulation of interferon was profiled on the Sackler School website – see article here.
07-30-18 Almost-2nd-year student Rachel Levene passed her qualifying exam with flying colors! Great job Rachel! She proposed a project on Dengue virus translation and its connection to the integrated stress response.
07-22-18 Matthew Butnaru presents his work on the identification of the KSHV protein ORF42 as a new regulator of gene expression as a poster at the International Herpesvirus Workshop 2018 in Vancouver, BC (Canada). Good job Matt!
07-20-18 Tate’s review on how caspases have roles independent of cell death in the replication cycle of gammaherpesviruses is out! https://jvi.asm.org/content/92/19/e01011-17
07-16-2018 Our lab and the Poltorak lab have received a pilot grant from the Russo family endowment fund to study innate immune response to DNA viruses using classical mouse genetics. Excited for this new collaboration!
06-13-2018 To celebrate the R01, we attempted to Escape the Room. Not successful but so close and good teamwork … we’ll have to resubmit!
05-27-2018 We are excited to announce that our R01 on the molecular mechanism of the influenza A virus PA-X has officially been funded!
05-22-2018 Sad day! Isabel, who came to our lab for her undergraduate thesis research and collected some tantalizing results on the cleavage specificity of the influenza A virus RNase PA-X, is going back to Spain to continue her undergraduate studies. But we sent her off in style with a boat sushi lunch (we are not crying, it’s the wasabi).
05-21-2018 Welcome to our new lab members Rachel Levene and Lea Gaucherand (Molecular Microbiology program)! They are looking forward to joining ‘team flu’.
05-18-2018 Congrats to senior graduate students Matt and Tate for their awards at the Sackler Graduation and Award ceremony (Sackler Enrichment Fund and Scakler Families Cancer Biology Fellowship)!
03-07-2018 Tate’s paper on caspases and regulation of type I interferons in KSHV is out! thttp://jvi.asm.org/content/92/10/e00078-18.abstract
Lab outing to celebrate Tate’s paper
02-01-2018 Isabel Gilabert from Universidad Francisco de Vitoria (Madrid), joins the lab for her thesis research. She will investigate how the ribonuclease from influenza A virus PA-X cuts RNA. Welcome!
10-16-2017 We are excited to have our research to study caspase regulation of interferon in KSHV infection funded by the American Cancer Society through a Research Scholar Grant. First big grant for the lab!
Lab outing to celebrate grant!
06-26-2017 Tate gave a great talk at ASV on caspases in interferon responses in KSHV infection and Matt presented his poster on the role of ORF42 in KSHV infection
06-14-2017 Tate is awarded a Sackler Family Cancer fellowship to work on how caspases regulate the KSHV replication cycle. Congratulations Tate!
06-01-2017 Nishali Shah and Veronica Canarte join the lab as summer students. Welcome!
07-29-2016 Hembly is leaving us for a PhD at Harvard University – sad day for us but congratulations Hembly!
07-20-2016 Tate gave an awesome talk at the KSHV workshop on our work on caspase regulation of interferon responses. First student talk at an international meeting from the lab!
06-01-2016 Sarah Dupont joins the lab as a summer student (BDBS program)
04-20-2016 Hembly and Summer’s review on host shutoff in influenza A virus and herpesviruses is out !! http://www.mdpi.com/1999-4915/8/4/102/html
02-05-2016 Summer and Denys’s paper on PA-X selective degradation of host messages is out !!! http://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1005427
12-15-2015 Paper on transcriptome-wide analysis of the cleavage sites of the KSHV RNase SOX is out!!! http://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1005305
08-19-2015 Justin Kusiel joins the lab as a masters student (Master in Biomedical Sciences program)
07-02-2015 Hembly Rivas presents poster at the 18th International workshop on KSHV and related agents- first presentation from the lab at an international meeting!
06-01-2015 Keyera Randolph joins the lab as a summer BDBS intern
05-21-2015 Lab receives Tufts Collaborates! grant for their work with Alexei Degterev
05-18-2015 Tate Tabtieng joins the lab as a graduate student (Biochemistry graduate program)
01-21-2015 Marta receives Rozan award to work on the role of caspases in KSHV infection (in collaboration with Alexei Degeterev)
09-02-2014 Hembly Rivas joins the lab as a PREP scholar
07-14-2014 Marta receives Earle P. Charlton research grant to support the influenza A virus project
05-10-2014 Matthew Butnaru joins the lab as a graduate student (Biochemistry graduate program)
04-28-2014 Summer Schmaling joins the lab as a research technician
01-02-2014 Gaglia lab opens … lots of empty space and boxes!