Lauren Ann Metskas, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences, Joint Appointment in Department of Chemistry, Purdue University

Project Title: Partial Maturation in Mosquito-Borne Flaviviruses: Developing new approaches to characterize the role of lattice heterogeneity in fusion, infectivity, and antibody neutralization

Award Year: 2022

Contact: metskas@purdue.edu

Biography

Lauren Ann Metskas specializes in the relationship between structure and function in large, imperfect protein assemblies, such as the lattices found in viruses. She studied conformational dynamics in disordered protein regions with single-molecule spectroscopy for her Ph.D. in the Rhoades lab at Yale University and added correlative techniques and cryo-electron tomography in postdocs with the Briggs group at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology and the Jensen group at Caltech. Her new group at Purdue combines these methods to link infectivity with unique arrangements of proteins in flaviviruses. The Metskas lab collaborates heavily with experts in both biological targets and in methods development.