Bryan Cullen is interested in the regulation of retroviral gene expression and in how the nucleocytoplasmic transport of mRNAs and proteins is controlled.
Viruses remain a major cause of morbidity and mortality among both human and animal populations.
Understanding how viruses replicate, and how their replication causes disease, therefore remains a critical area of research. However, viruses are not only of interest because of their pathogenic potential but also as experimentally manipulatable systems with the ability to shed light on key biological processes. My lab is interested in the fundamental biological processes that govern the replication of retroviruses, particularly the highly pathogenic human immunodeficiency virus HIV-1. One property shared by all members of this viral family is that their replication depends on the nuclear export, and cytoplasmic translation, of both unspliced and spliced forms of an initial genome-length viral RNA transcript. However, cells have developed surveillance mechanisms that prevent the inappropriate export of incompletely spliced cellular mRNAs, i.e., pre-mRNAs, and these same mechanisms can also block the nuclear export of retroviral mRNAs that retain introns.