Center of Excellence in Virus Research (CoE_VIRRES)

PUBLIC DESCRIPTION
The RC has been operating in the context of two Center of Excellences (CoE): CoE in Structural Virology 2000-2005 and CoE in Virus Research 2006-2011. The profound basic research conducted has allowed us to develop true applications and has brought up ideas that concern the whole viral universe. Combining high resolution structural results and functional data obtained by molecular biology methods we have been able to probe much deeper evolutionary relationships for viruses than can be achieved by analyzing genomic databases and using more traditional methods. This has lead to the hypothesis that the entire virosphere can be organized to a relatively small number of virus lineages containing viruses infecting hosts in all three domains of life (bacteria, archaea and eukarya). Such observation has also profound consequences to how we classify viruses. At the same time we have been able to contribute to the mapping of the viral universe by providing information of the new viruses in high detail. The established RC provides excellent conditions for doctoral training because of the multi-level research group containing people from undergraduate students to graduate students, post docs, senior scientists and the responsible person.

Responsible person: Dennis Bamford, Department of Biosciences and Institute of Biotechnology

Participation category: 1