Current Lab Members
Katya Heldwein, PhD
Principal Investigator
Katya received her PhD from Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, OR where she studied ligand recognition by bacterial transcription regulators using x-ray crystallography in the laboratory of Richard Brennan. She then did her postdoctoral work at Harvard Medical School in the laboratory of Stephen Harrison where she initially worked on clathrin adaptor complexes and later delved into herpesvirus cell entry. She opened her own laboratory at Tufts University School of Medicine in the Fall of 2006.
Elizabeth Draganova, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Elizabeth received her PhD in Chemistry from Georgia State University after completing her BS in Biochemistry from Kennesaw State University. She is interested in understanding the structural and mechanistic features of the HSV-1 nuclear egress complex by utilizing a variety of biochemical and biophysical techniques.
Ellen White, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Ellen received her PhD in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale University after completing her BS in Chemistry at James Madison University. Ellen is working on isolating and characterizing the prefusion form of viral fusogen glycoprotein B (gB) from HCMV and HSV-1.
Adam Hilterbrand, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Adam received his PhD in Microbiology from the University of Texas, Austin after receiving a BS in Molecular Biology from Loyola University Chicago. His research focuses on identifying specific herpesviral glycoprotein contributions to entry using a recently developed vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) pseudotyping system.
Nathalie Lavoie
Phd Student, Molecular Microbiology Program
Nathalie received a Bachelor’s degree in Biology from Boston College and a Masters in Spatial Analysis for Public Health from Johns Hopkins University.
Jose Martin Ramirez
MD/PhD Student, Molecular Microbiology Program
Martin received his BS in Biochemistry & Biology from California State University - San Bernadino in San Bernadino, CA. He is using single particle tracking (SPT) and total internal reflection microscopy in conjunction with the pseudo type VSV to study the intermediate mechanisms of viral entry and the specific roles of gB, gH, gL and gD.
Mike Thorsen
PhD Student, CMDB Program
Mike graduated from Boston College with a Bachelor’s degree in Biology and is studying the mechanism of nuclear egress by the nuclear egress complex (NEC) from HSV-1 and EBV.
Zemplen Pataki
MD/PhD Student, Molecular Microbiology Program
Zemplen graduated from Brown University with a Bachelor's degree in Health and Human Biology. He is using genetic, biochemical, and cellular approaches to elucidate how HSV glycoproteins cooperate to trigger membrane fusion at the appropriate time.
Bing Dai
PhD Student, CMDB Program
Bing received a Bachelors in Medicinal Chemistry from China Pharmaceutical University in Nanjing, China and a Masters Pharmacology and Drug Development from Tufts. His project focuses on identifying host proteins that facilitate HSV nuclear egress and determining the mechanisms by which they do so.
Gonzalo Gonzalez Del Pino
Postdoctoral Fellow
Gonzo received his PhD and Master's degrees in Biochemistry from Harvard University in 2020, where he studied the structure and regulation of BRAF and MEK1, two kinases central to the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) cascade. He graduated from the University of Miami with Bachelor's degrees in French and Biochemistry in 2012. His current work focuses on developing a pipeline using a synthetic nanobody library to select chaperones for X-ray crystallography and cryoelectron microscopy of the HSV-1 fusogen, gB, in its prefusion and intermediate conformations.
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