Description:

Title: Innate Immune Response to Virus Infection

Speaker: Ganes Sen, PhD / Cleveland Clinic

Host: Dr. Laimonis Laimins

Topic:

In vertebrates, virus infection of cells triggers the synthesis of interferons (IFN), which are secreted to act upon neighboring uninfected cells and protect them by inducing hundreds of antiviral proteins. Our research interests are in understanding how IFN synthesis is regulated and how IFN-stimulated genes (ISG) prevent virus replication. For mounting an innate immune response, cells sense virus infection primarily through the recognition of viral nucleic acids by various intracellular pattern recognition receptors such as TLRs, cGAS-STING and RLRs. We study the biochemistry of their signaling pathways that lead to IFN induction. Our studies on the antiviral actions of ISGs are currently focused on the IFIT family. By generating different IFIT knock-out mouse lines, we demonstrated virus-specific and cell-type specific antiviral actions of the IFIT proteins.