Tristan Jordan
University of Washington, WA·Microbiology & Immunology·Early-career
Cells must fight off viruses without attacking themselves. Doing this well depends on telling foreign genetic material apart from the cell's own.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Genetics
Biochemistry
- Topics
giant viruses
Megavirales
Marseilleviridae
- Grants
- 3 known grants, through Jun 2031
What they work on
- Characterize the immune-stimulating double-stranded RNAs (dsRNAs) that build up when DR1, DRAP1 or BTAF1, proteins that limit pervasive transcription, are lost and trigger an interferon response in cells.
- Map the protein domains that let DR1, DRAP1 and BTAF1 each control a distinct pool of dsRNA danger signals, even though all three regulate the same transcription pathway.
- Pinpoint which step of the life cycle fails when Marseilleviridae giant viruses infect resistant Acanthamoeba strains, using virological infection assays.
- Identify viral genes that overcome host restriction using forward genetic screens with chemical mutagenesis and next-generation sequencing, then test candidate genes by targeted mutation and overexpression.
- Run genetic screens in Acanthamoeba to find host genes that restrict Marseillevirus infection and help decide which amoeba strains a giant virus can infect.
- Use AI-driven protein structure prediction and homology detection to find giant-virus proteins that block known Acanthamoeba antiviral defenses.
- Discover new antiviral restriction systems by collecting environmental viruses and wild amoeba isolates, and by screening RNA from environmental microbial eukaryotes with functional metatranscriptomics.
More about the research
The research here asks how cells, from human cells to single-celled amoebae, detect and block viruses, and how cells keep their own RNA from triggering harmful immune alarms. One project studies human cells, where too much antiviral signaling can drive autoimmune disease. Two others use the amoeba Acanthamoeba and the "giant viruses" that infect it to find antiviral defenses that have barely been explored in eukaryotes, organisms whose cells have a nucleus.
Why it matters
Immune activation by a cell's own dsRNA contributes to several autoimmune diseases. The regulators of pervasive transcription could therefore become new targets for treatments that calm harmful interferon responses. Antiviral systems found in amoebae could provide new tools for detecting, modifying or destroying nucleic acids in biotechnology and medicine, as antiviral systems found in bacteria have done before.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jeannette Tenthorey
University of California-San Francisco, CA·Microbiology & Immunology·Early-career
Build stable, high-complexity HIV-1 libraries containing all possible single missense mutations across the capsid, using new tools that overcome long-standing barriers to producing saturating mutant viral libraries.
Jessica Sowa
West Chester University of Pennsylvania, PA·Microbiology & Immunology
Screen wild free-living nematodes, collected by students in the Nematode Hunters program, for infections that spread to C. elegans strains carrying fluorescent infection reporters.
Paul Kirchberger
Oklahoma State University, OK·Microbiology & Immunology
Compare the mechanisms of superinfection exclusion, by which a resident prophage blocks other viruses, across independently evolved microvirus prophages, a putative defense system and lytic microviruses that may have supplied its evolutionary precursors.
The school
University of Washington: 81 labs on PI Pages, $1.7B a year on research, 694 research doctorates a year.
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