{"id":175723,"date":"2021-08-04T07:45:18","date_gmt":"2021-08-04T11:45:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=175723"},"modified":"2021-08-04T09:00:07","modified_gmt":"2021-08-04T13:00:07","slug":"uconn-virus-expert-carol-teschke-awarded-fulbright-scholarship-to-study-in-the-uk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2021\/08\/uconn-virus-expert-carol-teschke-awarded-fulbright-scholarship-to-study-in-the-uk\/","title":{"rendered":"UConn Virus Expert Carol Teschke Awarded Fulbright Scholarship to Study in the UK"},"content":{"rendered":"

Carolyn Teschke,\u00a0professor\u00a0and department head\u00a0of molecular and cell biology at UConn, has been awarded a\u00a0<\/span>Fulbright Scholar Award<\/span><\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0study virus assembly and evolution\u00a0at the University of York, in the United Kingdom.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Teschke applied for the scholarship after talking with colleagues\u00a0at the University of York for months about a collaborative project\u00a0working on\u00a0the process of virus assembly. The Fulbright, which is awarded by the U.S. State Department and international sponsors,\u202fwill allow her to\u00a0conduct research in the U.K. for four months.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI am so pleased and excited to receive this prestigious award to study in the U.K.,\u201d says Teschke. \u201cMy hosts at the University of York, Professors\u00a0Riedun\u00a0Twarock, a mathematician who studies virus architecture,\u00a0and Fred Antson,\u00a0who studies large bacteriophages,\u00a0will work with me to mathematically model how viruses assemble using experimental data generated in my lab.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Teschke\u2019s research focuses on understanding how a virus puts itself together inside an infected cell. Using a model system of bacteriophage\u00a0P22, a\u00a0well-known\u00a0type of virus that infects bacteria, Teschke\u2019s lab group models how a\u00a0herpes virus would attack, assemble, and replicate inside a human cell.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cRa<\/span>ther than studying a herpes virus, growing\u00a0cell cultures and risking\u00a0getting infected, we use this simple\u00a0model\u00a0system,\u201d Teschke says.\u00a0\u201cIf we understand how our model system works, hopefully that information\u00a0will assist\u00a0scientists that\u00a0study\u00a0herpes viruses\u00a0and help them develop\u00a0antivirals.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

An antiviral for the herpes virus might prevent it from replicating once it attacks a cell, thus reducing the chances of someone getting\u00a0sick.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Teschke\u00a0hopes to use her lab\u2019s data and\u00a0Twarock\u2019s\u00a0mathematics\u00a0expertise in the\u00a0geometry\u00a0of\u00a0\u00a0virus\u00a0capsids, or its outer protein-based shell, to understand on a more detailed level how the different proteins of P22 assemble.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s almost like a dance, the way the virus proteins have to come together in a specific order, with a particular affinity, or tightness, to make the capsid,\u201d Teschke says. \u201cIf we have an idea how tight the\u00a0interaction between the\u00a0proteins\u00a0must\u00a0be, we can make an antiviral that interrupts that process in the early stages.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

By\u00a0collaborating with Antson, Teschke hopes to understand how a virus evolves to grow bigger over time, and whether she can change the proteins in her model virus to become bigger, like the ones Antson works with.\u00a0This would help her understand\u00a0the process of virus evolution, where a virus accumulates mutations that\u00a0affect the viral capsid geometry.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Teschke will spend four months at the University of York studying the geometry and evolution of a type of virus that could help develop antivirals. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":140,"featured_media":175730,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2226],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2214],"class_list":["post-175723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-clas"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-08 11:31:55","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/140"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175723"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":175737,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175723\/revisions\/175737"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/175730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175723"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=175723"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=175723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}