Karakterisatie van Chikungunya virus-gastheer eiwit interacties betrokken in virus entry

Arboviruses require a hematophagous arthropod vector for their transmission to vertebrates. This peculiar mode of transmission involves a complex and as yet obscure interaction between the virus, the vector and the vertebrate. The alphavirus Chikungunya has lost the requirement for enzootic amplification and now causes extensive epidemics in tropical urban centers, as well as in more temperate regions as a result of the expanding habitat of anthropophylic mosquitoes like Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus. In 2014, approximately 1.5 million Chikungunya cases were reported in the Caribbean and the Americas. Endogenous transmission was also reported in Montpellier, France. We propose a systems biology approach to disentangle the earliest steps in the Chikungunya replication cycle, i.e. viral attachment and entry into a host cell. This process is poorly defined for alphaviruses and the receptor for Chikungunya entry is elusive. The results from this study will contribute significantly to the understanding of the initial steps of the Chikungunya replication cycle and will yield novel insights for alphavirus inhibition strategies. Furthermore, the generic platform presented here allows to study host-pathogen and vector-pathogen interactions of other viral and non-viral agents.

Trefwoorden:B780-tropische-geneeskunde

Project type:PhD project