Structural Biology Core

PROJECT SUMMARY - CORE C Bunyaviruses and Picornaviruses are RNA viruses that cause outbreaks of human disease. Given their diversity and mechanisms of transmission, they represent potential pathogens of pandemic potential. The major goal of our Bunyavirus and Picornavirus ReVAMPP (BP4) Center is to establish optimized design technologies for vaccines and antibody therapeutics based on prototype bunyaviruses and picornaviruses that can be readily applied to newly emerging threats. Research in our Structure Core C will use structural biology, computational biology, and biophysics approaches to support the Projects and Cores of this consortium. The ability to probe antigen-antibody interactions at a molecular level using these tools provides insight into the specificity and affinity of antigen-antibody interactions and guides iterative redesign of the antigen in collaboration with the Projects and Cores. Thus, cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) and X-ray crystallography structures of antibody-antigen complexes will be determined and characterized. Core C will provide the expertise that could be used to engineer antigen reagents to elicit and evaluate the optimal protective immune response against target immunogens. Core C activities will be conducted in two physical sites with complementary expertise and physical assets, with the Purdue site supporting Projects 1-2 on picornaviruses and the VUMC site supporting Projects 3-5 on hantaviruses and arenaviruses. The two sites already have a long-standing collaborative relationship and will share expertise, technology, and reagents. Core C will work closely with each Project Leader and other Core research teams to ensure exchange data and analyses to guide the efficient scientific development of consortium goals. The Core will manage data deposition of structural data on behalf of the Projects to the Protein Data Bank (PDB), Electron Microscopy Data Bank (EMDB), the NIH Immune Epitope Database and Analysis Resource (IEDB) and related public access databases.