David Stuart - Viruses, virus receptors and related cell surface proteins. We study viruses partly because their simplicity makes them attractive models for more complex systems. In addition viral pathogens continue to take a serious toll of many living organisms, so that new therapies developed from structural insights would be of great value.
Animal viruses share a number of common properties.
They possess a protective shell made from the self-assembly of large numbers of copies of a handful of different types of protein. Usually an external viral protein recognises one or more receptor molecules on the host cell, modulating the tissue tropism of the virus. These aspects are the current focus of several strands of work. Some recent publishedf results are given in the reference list, which provides an overview of the work. Here we present simply a summary of a few aspects.