These Viruses Are Forever: Consequences of Retroviral DNA Integration to Aids and Evolution

Air Date: Tuesday, March 16, 2021, 3pm Duration: 01:16:17 This WALS lecture also is part of the Demystifying Medicine course series John Coffin is an American Cancer Society Research Professor at Tufts University School of Medicine. He also maintains a joint position as a special advisor at the NCI Center for Cancer Research at NCI. His research interests revolve around obtaining a better understanding of the interaction of retroviruses with their host cells and organisms. He uses simple retroviruses (avian and murine viruses) as well as HIV to elucidate the nature of the retrovirus-receptor interaction. Unique among pathogens of eukaryotes, retroviruses are distinctive in their replication through an obligate integrated DNA intermediate — the provirus — resulting in many biological consequences unique to this virus group. This talk will focus on two such consequences: the rich “fossil record“ of infection of our primate ancestors for more than 100 million years in the for