To successfully infect the tissues and hosts they encounter, viruses must efficiently bind, enter, and replicate in target cells and rapidly adapt to changing environmental pressures. Research in the Ogden lab is focused on the tropism and diversity mechanisms of RNA viruses, including rotavirus and reovirus. Rotavirus is an important cause of diarrheal disease that results in the deaths of more than a hundred thousand infants and children each year. In the Ogden Lab, we are studying functions of rotavirus outer-capsid proteins in infection and neutralization, contributions of FAST proteins to virus spread, and effects of virus transport as free particles or in extracellular vesicles. Reovirus is an oncolytic virus that is rarely associated with acute disease in humans. The Ogden Lab uses reovirus to answer fundamental questions about virus structure, virus-cell interactions, and viral diversity. Themes we explore include packaging signals, RNA recombination and defective viral genomes, gene segment reassortment during coinfection, virus egress and infection in extracellular vesicles, and structural dynamics of the attachment protein during cell entry. A long-term goal of the lab is to engineer viruses to make better vaccines, therapeutics, and research tools.

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