Park, Arnold
Arnold is a second year trainee and is in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics. His research mentor is Dr. BenHur Lee. He received a B.A. degree in 2008 from Harvard College.
Mentor: Dr. Benhur Lee
HIV-1 Gag and Nipah virus Matrix are capable of budding on their own in the absence of other viral proteins. Nipah virus is a member of the paramyxoviridae family. While HIV-1 Gag budding has been examined in great detail, little is known about paramyxovirus budding. In our efforts to determine cellular host factors that are involved in Nipah Matrix budding, we made the surprising discovery that co-transfection of 293T cells with HIV-1 Gag and Nipah Matrix led to a dramatic enhancement of Nipah virus Matrix budding. At the minimum, this suggests that HIV-1 gag and Nipah Matrix do not use the identical set of cellular host factors for viral budding. I am currently
investigating the various hypotheses that might explain this surprising phenomenon, and I will seek to identify potentially novel host factors involved in paramyxovirus budding.
