Melanie Ott, PhD

My laboratory is interested in the molecular mechanisms of viral pathogenesis. We focus on a variety of viruses including HIV-1, Hepatitis B and C Virus (HBV and HCV), Zika and SARS-CoV-2. We believe that identifying common host pathways involved in different viruses can lead to the discovery of panviral therapeutics. All are important public health problems and with HCV and HIV sharing common traits including high propensities to establish chronic infections and a lack of efficient vaccines, and Zika and SARS-CoV-2 causing global pandemics leading to death and disability. In recent years, we have established four main technologies to study these viruses—rapid quantitative tests, human organoids, a viral protein library and transcriptomics and chromatin biology. We recently applied these technologies to the studies of SARS-CoV-2, leading to the development of a new direct detection CRISPR diagnostic and the identification of shared host factors necessary for the replication of SARS-CoV-2 and common cold coronaviruses. SARS-CoV-2, HCV and HIV research in my laboratory includes replication studies with infectious viral clones, which are performed in the BSL3 laboratory. Recent rotation projects in the lab: • characterizing influenza B infection in human airway organoids • developing a new hepatitis B clone to screen for host factors regulating cccDNA formation