PhD Public Seminar - Sabrina Chau
PhD Oral Examination for Sabrina Chau, supervisor: Dr. Marc Meneghini
Investigation of mycovirus attenuation in the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae reveals a complex network of host-virus interactions.
Date: May 7th, 2024, 11:00 AM Location: MSB 3278
Zoom Meeting ID: 585 861 6369, Passcode: 772027
Abstract: The budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is chronically infected with numerous RNA viruses, the most well-studied of which is the dsRNA virus L-A and its satellite virus M. Due to their symptomless infection, L-A has traditionally been considered as benign to the host, and M is even considered as advantageous by conferring killing activity to the host. However, I report here that the loss of parallel antiviral factors, the mitochondrial nuclease Nuc1 and cytosolic exosome associated Ski complex, leads to a significant increase in viral load. Moreover, this increase correlates with reduced growth fitness that I show is, in fact, caused by these mycoviruses. Further investigation into the cause of the L-A viral pathogenesis shows that high L-A levels are correlated with proteostatic stress and protein aggregation, suggesting that cytotoxic proteostatic stress underlies L-A pathogenesis.