Investigating Mosquito-Virus Interactions: Insights from Dengue and Zika Virus Research

Event Details

Type

Other Seminars

Speaker(s)

2:00 p.m.: Shiho Torii, Ph.D., postdoctoral fellow, insect-virus interactions, department of virology, Institut Pasteur, Identification of Zika Virus Genes Involved in Mosquito Transmissibility

2:30 p.m.: Thomas Vial, Ph.D., postdoctoral fellow, insect-virus interactions, department of virology, Institut Pasteur, Mosquito Resistance to Dengue Virus Revealed by Single-cell Gene Expression and Metabolomic Profiling of Midgut and Fat Body

Speaker bio(s)

Dr. Shiho Torii obtained her PhD in 2020 from Hokkaido University in Japan, where she focused on studying interactions between Chikungunya virus and ESCRT proteins. Following that, she worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher for one year at Osaka University in Japan, investigating the role of flavivirus NS1 protein. Dr. Torii joined Louis Lambrechts' lab at the Institut Pasteur in 2021. Currently, Dr. Torii is conducting research aimed at understanding the molecular compatibility between Zika virus and Aedes aegypti. Her work combines various skills, including in vivo mosquito experiments, viral reverse genetics, and proteomics analysis to explore both viral and mosquito factors that regulate this compatibility.

Dr. Thomas Vial is originally from France, where he completed his graduate studies. Subsequently, he embarked on a Ph.D. project that spanned Laos, France, and primarily Singapore, where he collaborated with Duke-NUS Medical School under the supervision of Dr. Garcia-Blanco and Dr. Julien Pompon from 2016 to 2020. His research during this period focused on investigating the impact of dengue virus infection on mosquito lipid metabolism. Following the completion of his thesis, Dr. Vial spent a year as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, where he worked on the replication complex of SARS-CoV-2. Dr. Vial is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institut Pasteur since 2022, working within Louis Lambrechts' lab. Currently, his research is centered on mosquito-virus interactions, with a specific emphasis on deciphering mosquito resistance mechanisms to dengue virus using multi-omics approaches, including metabolomics and single-cell RNA-seq.

Open to

Tri-Institutional