Save the date: Retrovirology Dinner Club Meeting, two 30 minute talks by Joseph McWhirter (BU) & Michael Rist (Tufts)

Talk title: “HIV-1/Mtb Co-infection Selects for bNAb-Resistant Envelopes Revealed by Droplet PCR Sequencing”

Mentor: Manish Sagar, MD

Bio: Joseph completed his Bachelor of Science in Microbiology and Bachelor of Arts in Economics at the University of Oklahoma in 2021. During his undergraduate training, he worked on developing approaches to maximize the diversity of microbial cultures in order to identify new antibiotics effective against drug-resistant bacterial pathogens. In the fall of 2021, he entered Boston University’s Program in Biomedical Sciences (PiBS) and joined the laboratory of Dr. Manish Sagar in the fall of 2022. As a PhD student in the Sagar Lab, his research focuses on developing a digital droplet PCR–based sequencing approach that enables high-fidelity amplification of thousands of viral genomes in a single reaction while minimizing recombination artifacts. Using this method, his work examines how HIV-1 envelope quasispecies respond to increased selective pressures and characterizes pathways of viral escape. In addition, he studies HIV-1/Mycobacterium tuberculosis coinfection and how it shapes the selection of HIV-1 envelope variants resistant to broadly neutralizing antibody (bNAb) treatment.

Talk title: “Aberrant splicing of HIV into host STAT3 drives its nuclear localization”

Mentor: Dr. John Coffin

Bio: Michael Rist is a recent Immunology PhD graduate from Tufts University. He did his doctoral work in Dr. John Coffin’s lab which focused on understanding the role of HIV proviral integration in T cell persistence and oncogenesis. He is currently continuing this work as a Postdoctoral Scholar. Prior to his PhD, he attended Wheaton College (MA) as an undergraduate, worked as a research tech at the CVVR, and worked as one of the first employees at a biotech startup, which is now Sana Biotechnology.