Jonathan Leis
Professor
Microbiology/Immunology
To contact Dr. Leis:
phone: 312-503-1166
e-mail:j-leis@northwestern.edu
Dr. Leis’s website
Research Interests:
Multidisciplinary molecular genetics and biochemical approaches are being
used in Dr. Jonathan Leis’ lab to study replication of avian and human
retroviruses. Areas of particular interest are in reverse transcription, viral
DNA integration, and virion assembly.
Specific projects include studying 1) the role of viral RNA secondary structures
in initiation of reverse transcription, 2) the mechanism of concerted integration
of viral DNA into the host chromosome by integrase (IN) using an in vitro
reconstituted system and identification of the amino acids of tIN responsible
for specificity for the LTR ends, 3) the mechanism of processing of Gag and
Pol polyproteins into mature viral proteins by the virus-specific protease
(PR), and 4) the role of a Gag polyprotein assembly domain in budding of virus
particles from cells.
In many of these studies, amino acid substitutions have been placed at biochemically
or structurally important residues and the effect these changes have on viral
replication and on the properties of the mutant proteins have been defined.
The first structure of a retroviral enzyme, the structure of Rous sarcoma virus protease, was solved by Leis' lab in collaboration with Dr. Wlodawer's lab in NIH.