Virology Commons^™

The Alphaviral Capsid Protein Inhibits Irak1-Dependent Tlr Signaling To Promote Pathogenesis., V. "Trey" Landers

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Alphaviruses are positive-sense RNA viruses spread by mosquitos. They can cause a severe multi-joint febrile arthritis or encephalitis resulting in death or life-long cognitive impairments. To date there are no approved antiviral therapeutics or vaccine strategies for the treatment of alphaviruses creating a critical need to better understand the host pathogen interactions of alphaviruses that enable pathogenesis. It is known that alphaviruses evade innate immune responses by shutting down host transcription and translation, but these methods are dependent on viral gene expression and leave a critical time frame during early infection before viral gene expression has begun that the virus …