Viruses infect their respective hosts efficiently through a regulated process of recognizing highly specific receptors and subsequently transferring genomic material across cell membrane barriers. To understand the underlying mechanisms that control virus infection, it is important to characterize viral events in a biologically relevant manner. My laboratory focuses on a correlated approach to deciphering the processes of virus assembly and infection via a combination of biochemistry, molecular biology, biophysics and structural biology (electron cryo-microscopy and three-dimensional image reconstruction methods). The main project of the laboratory involves understanding assembly and host-recognition mechanisms in dsDNA-containing bacteriophage (family Podoviridae)
