Source: University of York
Date: April 4, 2007

Science Daily — A mathematician at the University of York has been
awarded a Research Leadership Award of more than £700,000 by the
Leverhulme Trust to study the geometry of viruses.

Dr Reidun Twarock, an Anniversary Reader in the Departments of
Biology and Mathematics, will study the structure and assembly of
viruses, which will help to develop new anti-viral strategies.

"I would like to use the Leverhulme Trust Award to build up a group
of mathematicians, computational biologists and biophysicists to
address a portfolio of projects arising from these results," said Dr
Reidun Twarock.

Viruses have highly symmetrical external shells formed from proteins
that encapsulate the viral genome. Dr Twarock has developed a method
for encoding the structures of these protein shells that pinpoint the
locations of the proteins and the bonds between them. With
collaborators Professor Cristian Micheletti, from the International
School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Trieste, Italy, and Professor
Anne Taormina, from the University of Durham, she has used these
results to model the assembly of viruses.

Subsequent work with collaborators Professor Peter Stockley, Dr Neil
Ranson and their groups at the Astbury Centre for Structural
Molecular Biology at the University of Leeds suggests that not only
the geometry of the viral capsids themselves but also the full three-
dimensional structures of the particles are constrained. The
implications of this discovery on virus assembly are currently being
investigated.

Dr Twarock said: "I would like to use the Leverhulme Trust Award to
build up a group of mathematicians, computational biologists and
biophysicists to address a portfolio of projects arising from these
results."

This grant will enable Dr Twarock to expand her group and fund three
postdoctoral positions and four PhD students. The group will
collaborate closely with the Astbury Centre in Leeds, and they will
jointly organise a workshop on Mathematical Virology at the
International Centre for Mathematical Sciences in August 2007.

Dr Twarock's group will be part of the York Centre of Complex Systems
Analysis (YCCSA), including biologists, mathematicians and computer
scientists, which is based in the Department of Biology at York.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by
University of York.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070402153248.htm