NOTE: This program is no longer active.
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Using Advanced Molecular Biology Techniques to Understand HIV Infection
Team: Dr. Manuel Llano & Eduardo Urias
The Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is the causative agent of the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). The HIV infection has pandemic levels and is the most serious infectious disease challenge to public health today. According to the most recent AIDS epidemic updates, the rate of new infection worldwide is higher than 6800 persons/day with over 5700 persons dying from AIDS every day. Advances in anti-HIV drugs have led to a significant reduction in AIDS-related deaths, delayed the progression of the HIV infection to AIDS and diminished the rates of HIV transmission. The identification of novel viral and cellular processes essential for HIV infection is necessary to develop new anti-HIV drugs to continue improving the medical management of this infection.
The goal of the proposed project is to better understand how HIV infects human cells and teach the gained knowledge to undergraduate students attending the General Microbiology course (MICR 2440) at The University of Texas at El Paso. The student participating in this project will be part of a research team involving undergraduate and graduate students, postdocs, and the principal investigator of this application. The project does NOT involve working with HIV, instead the selected student will use advanced molecular biology techniques to determine the role of specific cellular proteins in HIV infection. Particularly, this student will engineer mutations in selected cellular proteins using polymerase chain reaction (PCR), agarose gel electrophoresis, bacterial transformation, DNA restriction analysis, and DNA sequencing. Then, other members of the research team will use these molecular tools to determine the implication of the mutated cellular proteins in HIV infection. The student participating in this project is expected to incorporate the results of his/her research into lectures and laboratory practices of the General Microbiology course, and also to present them at research meetings, and include them in peer-reviewed publications. It is not necessary that the selected student has previous experience in molecular biology; however genuine motivation for advancing our ability to block HIV infection is required.
