Congratulations to Dr. Sherwood Casjens for his reception of an NIH grant, funding continuation of his research on the P22 bacterial virus.

Research in the 1960s and 1970s on bacteriophages (bacterial viruses, also called “phages”) played a central role in our understanding of how genes work, but interest in them waned in the 1980s and 1990s. However, over the last decade, research on bacterial viruses has worked its way back into the scientific eye as their significance in the ecology of Earth’s biosphere as well as in medicine has been increasingly recognized. It is for neither of these reasons, however, that Dr. Sherwood Casjens is studying these viruses. Particularly he is researching how bacterial viruses are built from their protein and nucleic acid parts.

To research the virus building process, Dr. Casjens and colleagues study the structure and assembly of a Salmonella bacterial phage called P22.  Over the course of his research and through collaboration with several different institutions, much has already been discovered about the structure of P22.  From data gathered over many years, they have discovered all of the 13 genes that encode the proteins for assembling the phage, and they know the general role of each of these genes but are now interested in the exact role of each of the genes.  To get this information, a detailed knowledge of the structure of the virus is needed. 

The grant was probably funded because recent high resolution structures of three parts of the virus determined by Dr. Casjens and his collaborators have lead to detailed hypotheses about several aspects of P22 virion assembly and function.  Future research for Dr. Casjens will be focused on learning even more about P22, continuing his past research on how this virus is built.

Congratulations again to Dr. Casjens for his recent award.  We are looking forward to more discoveries involved with P22 and bacterial viruses.