The Institut Pasteur-UCSF QBI Center of Excellence in Emerging Infectious Diseases Seminar Series presents Caroline Demeret, the Head of the Interactomics, RNA and Immnunity Group in the Virology Department at Institut Pasteur. 

Dr. Demeret's research is focused on exploring binary, direct virus/host protein-protein interactions (“contactome”), which are shaping the viral exploitation of the cellular proteome. Using different versions of Protein Complementation Assays based on split-luciferases, her group developed mapping pipelines, providing systematic and comparative virus/host interaction maps that they applied to a variety of viruses, including Human Papillomaviruses, Influenza A viruses and more recently to SARS-CoV-2 and other Coronaviruses. Their studies are aimed to characterize molecular requisites underlying viral infection, adaptation to humans or disease outcome. Applying these comparative interactomic strategies to emerging viruses to assess their ability to exploit the human proteome could contribute to surveillance of emerging infections and improve pandemic preparedness.

The ability of intracellular pathogens to take control the cell machinery for their own replication cycle and for evading intracellular immunity governs their pathogenic power, virulence, and ultimately infection outcome. Unbiased, system-level host/pathogens protein-protein (PPIs) interaction mapping reveals pathogens’ takeover of the cell proteome, which are initiated by the physical contacts that pathogens proteins establish with the host proteins. Dr. Demeret's team is exploring such direct host/pathogens PPIs (“contactome”) using mammalian cell-based split-luciferase assays and applying their strategies to various human viruses. This supervised and systematic interactomics pipeline (“contactomics”) offers a compelling complement of unsupervised proteome wide host/pathogens mappings. From the comparative exploration of the contactomes of different viral strains, they aim to uncover the molecular correlates of viral pathogenic power and adaptation to humans. In her talk, Dr. Demeret will present contactomic studies that her group conducted on SARS-CoV-2.

Talk Title: Comparative Host/pathogens “Contactomics” Dedicated to Infectious Diseases

Host: John Gross