This entry will be the story of my work and M.Sc study at Institute of Molecular Biology & Genetics. I’m in the laboratory of Molecular Virology but the members in the Institute like to called Dengue Lab because of in past the major research in our lab is studied the mechanism of Dengue virus protein. Although my work is studied in Japanese encephalitis virus. I’m studying in international course, that will use English language in entrance, interview and study, the course is very hard in grading because it will be grading by the number of student only in the course. The communication at here is only you can talk and understand in English.

• Briefly about Japanese encephalitis virus.

Japanese encephalitis virus or JEV (japanese encephalitis virus : 日本脳炎) is a mosquito borne neurotropic virus which causes severe diseases of central nerve system. This virus has 30% fatality rate and outbreak in tropical area at south east Asia to east Asia. The JEV has no drug to treat and the vaccine is expensive and have many side effect.

• Picture show the outbreak area of JEV

JEV is in the same family of Dengue, Hepatitis C or Yellow fever virus (Flaviviridae). In this group will have RNA as a genome and translate in to 1 long polyprotein. The polyprotein will process by cleave at cleavage site and release into 9 individual protein( Capsid, Envelope, NS1,NS2a,NS2b,NS3,N4a,NS4b,NS5). Which NS2b and NS3 will be the first protein that work after translation because this 2 component of protease has a important role to cleaved the polyprotein of virus.

This protein is the good target for drug development. The NS2b and NS3 is mostly conserve in all virus in this group. The NS3 have the Protease that fold like Chymotrypsin as 1 of 3 enzyme. In my lab is interested in NS3 mechanism because NS3 can’t work with out NS2b. We research the activity of NS3 and NS2b of Dengue before and now we start to study this protein in JEV. Our lab have studied the inhibition assays to the protease for drug development.

• image show Chymotrypsin mechanism

If we found a good inhibitor to NS3, that will use to develop as a drug. In the lab we use several tool to do our research. The wet lab will use Cloning, expression, purification and characterization of protein and for dry lab will use computer for alignment both sequence alignment and Structural alignment or create the homology modelling.

this is the briefly of my work, if anyone interest to join our lab we have many scholarship to you.

references :

Laboratory of Molecular Viorology

Collaborator

Prof. Jarl Wikberg, MD, Dept. of Pharmaceutical Biosciences, Uppsala University, Sweden

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