Antiviral RNAi in plants and mammals

Dr. Shou-Wei Ding obtained his bachelor and master degrees from China and PhD from Australian National University and completed his postdoctoral training in University of Adelaide, Australia. He began his independent research career as the Principal Investigator of Molecular Virology Laboratory in the Institute of Molecular Agrobiology affiliated with National University of Singapore. Dr. Ding relocated to University of California, Riverside in 2000 and was promoted to the rank of full professor in 2005 in the Department of Microbiology and Plant Pathology. He serves on the editorial boards of Virology, Journal of Virology and Advances in Virus Research and as a section editor of PLoS Pathogens. For his contributions to the functional and mechanistic understanding of RNAi-mediated antiviral immunity in plants and animals, Dr. Ding was elected as Fellow of AAAS in 2006 and of American Academy of Microbiology in 2012.

The research programs in my lab focus on the identification and characterization of evolutionarily conserved host immune responses to RNA virus infection in plants and animals. In the first part of this seminar, I shall present our recent evidence demonstrating an antiviral function of the RNAi pathway in mammals either competent or defective in the classical antiviral responses regulated by interferons. In counter-defense, both Nodamura virus and Influenza A virus encode an unrelated dsRNA-binding protein that suppresses antiviral RNAi by inhibiting Dicer-mediated processing of viral dsRNA replicative intermediates into siRNAs. In the second part of this seminar, I shall describe a sensitized forward genetic screen established in Arabidopsis thaliana plants for the discovery of novel components in the antiviral RNAi pathway. Functional analysis of the identified genes from the screen has revealed the involvement of phospholipids in the amplification of viral siRNAs. 

Guo Z, Li Y and Ding SW. 2019. Nature Reviews Immunology 19(1):31-44; 

Ding SW, Han Q, Wang J, Li WX. Curr Opin Immunol. 2018 Oct; 54:109-114

This seminar will NOT be livestreamed or recorded.