Journal of Biological Chemistry
Research ArticleEditors' PickSARS-CoV-2 infects cells after viral entry via clathrin-mediated endocytosis
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Armin Bayati is a PhD student at McGill University, in Integrated Program in Neuroscience under the supervision of Dr Peter McPherson. Armin is interested in the endocytic pathways taken by pathogens such as prions, aggregated proteins, and viruses, which is why he was interested to investigate SARS-CoV-2. Following the COVID-19 project, Armin’s research will be focusing on Parkinson’s disease, specifically on the endocytosis and trafficking of alpha-synuclein protofibrils. Once established, Armin will then explore the mechanisms underlying formation of cytoplasmic aggregates by alpha-synuclein fibrils. Armin's research could lead to significant advancement in our understanding of Parkinson's disease pathophysiology and the developing of treatments for the disease.
Rahul Kumar is a graduate student in the lab of Dr Peter McPherson at McGill University. His research is focused on understanding regulation of small GTPases in membrane trafficking. Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr McPherson’s lab turned their attention to study entry mechanism of SARS-Cov-2 using their long-standing expertise in cell biology of neurological diseases, which led to the discovery of clathrin-mediated endocytosis of SARS-Cov-2 as a first step in viral infection. With the completion of this project, Kumar is now focused on his thesis work—understanding the regulation of Rab GTPases by DENN domain containing proteins, guanine nucleotide exchange factors (GEFs) for Rabs. As many DENN domain proteins have mutations linked to human diseases, it is exciting time to characterize many of the uncharacterized members of DENN domain family and study their underlying molecular mechanisms.
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These authors contributed equally to this work.