Systematic discovery and analysis of novel molecular mechanisms in protein synthesis

In cells, messenger RNAs (mRNAs) are translated by ribosomes into proteins. When viruses infect cells, they "hijack" the host protein synthesis machinery to translate viral mRNAs into viral proteins. Viruses have evolved many non-canonical mechanisms to manipulate the protein synthesis machinery to increase viral protein-coding capacity and/or to out-compete host mRNAs for access to ribosomes. The known repertoire of viral non-canonical translation mechanisms derives from just a tiny fraction of the estimated viral diversity on Earth. We will leverage our expertise in computational biology to mine public transcriptomic datasets for 10000s of novel virus species, and use our expertise in comparative genomics and molecular biology to identify and characterize novel gene expression strategies. This work will reveal new ways in which the protein synthesis machinery can be manipulated, identify possible new modes of cellular gene expression, and underpin development of new tools for molecular biology research, biotechnology and synthetic biology.