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Minimal Model of Poxvirus Infection - The structural changes that occur during the initial contact between a virus and its host remains one of the major challenges in infection biology. The goal of my project in Jason Mercer’s group in close collaboration with Ricardo Henriques’ group and Ewa Paluch’s group is to create a new minimal model of poxvirus infection. The model will be amenable to novel super-resolution microscopy (SRM) methods that allow the visualization of viral structures at resolutions of tens of nanometers. Recently developed analytical tools like single-virion averaging allows the generation of precise models from hundreds of events. This affords unprecedented insights into the biological and biophysical requirements of virus infection. Furthermore, I aim to investigate the dynamics of virus architectural changes during the first stages of infection, particularly at the membrane level, by combining single-molecule techniques with the new model-system. Based on this model I will investigate protein structure-function relationships within the prototypic poxvirus, vaccinia.