Wesley I. Sundquist

Research Interests

HIV-1 Assembly

The long-term goal of our research is to understand the structure, assembly, and budding of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, HIV-1, in molecular detail. Although genetically simple, HIV-1 must accomplish a number of sophisticated tasks including cellular penetration, disassembly, replication, nuclear localization, integration, reassembly, budding, and maturation. The mechanistic and structural details of these processes are of general relevance both to eukaryotic biology and to human health since the virus replicates in human cells and is an important human pathogen. Ongoing research in our laboratory is aimed at examining the structures and protein-protein interactions of the viral coat proteins and of cellular factors involved in virus budding.