Virus Research Laboratory

Academic leader: Professor Wang Hualei

Team members: Professor Duan Ming, Associate Professor Zhang Maolin, Associate Professor Guan Zhenhong, Associate Professor Guo Yidi

The Virus Laboratory is established in 2007, with academician Jinning Yi as the leader. The laboratory mainly conducts basic and applied research on important zoonotic viral diseases. Through the in-depth study of virus infection and pathogenic mechanisms, the laboratory explores the ways for termination of infection/reduction of harm and using the RABV recombinant virus as a vector for neural circuit and neural repair thus providing new thoughts and new methods for effective prevention of the diseases.

At present, focusing on rabies and influenza the laboratory has been carrying out researches on viral infection transmission, protein interaction, rapid diagnostic reagents and immune adjuvants. The laboratory has 4 core researchers and has undertaken 6 national-level projects.

Research directions:

(1) Focus on important zoonotic diseases such as rabies virus and influenza virus, and apply technologies such as directed neuronucleus introduction, reverse genetics, and expression profiling to study the infection and transmission of viruses in host cells and the effects on host cells’ structure, function and body immunity regarding genes and protein expression levels and analyze the pathogenic mechanism of viruses.

(2) Establish and develop rapid, sensitive and specific detection methods and products targeting important zoonotic viral diseases.

(3) Develop new therapeutic vaccines and related adjuvants and protective agents.

Research results:

(1) Established the annotation platform for pathogenic microorganisms barcode and pan-genome

The use of computational biology technology to visualize whole-genome information is first of its kind in the world. The genomic barcode pan-genome annotation platform has been established and successfully used for the identification and classification of pathogenic microorganisms, making the molecular typing of pathogens more consistent with clinical diseases. It provides a new perspective for the interpretation of disease occurrence and development.

The internationally renowned genomics scientist Takashi Gojobori and Huang Q of the University of Hong Kong spoke highly of the technology and pointed out that this technology will lead the future development of microbial genomes.

(2) Established a molecular evolution system platform for wild measles strains

In the world, it is the first to construct the largest measles virus and coronavirus N gene sequence data set to date and apply the latest Bayes-Markov chain method to carry out dynamic molecular evolution research to estimate the appearance time and mutation of each gene subtype speed, source of infection, epidemic trend, etc. and it has played an important part in epidemic control of infectious diseases as well as the R&D of new vaccines.

Professor Camille Lévy, a famous French virologist, affirmed that the genetic mutation of the measles virus in this study was the main factor causing the poor effect of the vaccine. It provided an important basis for the development of new virus vaccines.

(3) The scan verifies the pan-genome of the diagnostic target of Mycobacterium tuberculosis .

Gene markers for diagnosis of Mycobacterium tuberculosis were obtained through pan-genome high-throughput scanning and large-scale clinical verification was carried out. A new hybrid signal amplification technology and a web database platform for tuberculosis essential genes were established to provide services for domestic and foreign demanders. Related results have been applied and promoted by many domestic hospitals.