About me
Despite growing up in Leeds I chose to undertake a BSc in Biochemistry at the University of Lincoln. During my second year, I won a competitive research scholarship to spend the summer investigating the viral capsid structure of Herpes Simplex Virus 1. I chose to do my third-year project with the same supervisor, investigating the thermostability of the triplex structure with regard to VP19c and VP23. The year I spent in the lab gave me the confidence to apply to PhD programs, as well as a fascination with viruses that built on my long-held interest in infectious diseases.
My Project
Hepatitis E Virus (HEV) is a positive-sense RNA virus responsible for acute hepatic failure, jaundice and neurological complications, specifically in pregnant women and the immunocompromised. There are eight known genotypes including obligate human pathogens, non-human pathogens and zoonotic pathogens that can pass between animals and humans. Genotype 3 is zoonotic and primarily infects porcine species however, it transmits fecal-orally into humans in developed countries. Its genome contains three open reading frames (ORFs) with ORF1 encoding multiple non-structural regions including the hypervariable region (HVR). The HVR is a disordered region which has been suggested to increase the host range of the virus and may have some influence on replication. However we know very little about why this happens and whether these changes are consistent across human and animal infections. My project aims to investigate whether the influence on replication in the HVR is structural, RNA or protein-based and whether similar mutations can be carried across to the obligate human Genotype 1.