Past Project: Modelling of HIV Infection

[2016.10 – 2018.06]

I am involved in two other research projects in Prof. Bau’s group at UPenn, both related to HIV. The first project is about the molecular testing of HIV detection. We focus on assays based on isothermal nucleic acid amplification which have a huge potential in cheap, on-site point of care diagnosis. I myself contribute to modeling the amplification curve to extract information including sample numbers and amplification rates.

The second project focuses on the tRNA retrograde transport, which is a critical process in HIV infection. This phenomenon is responsible for the transport of the HIV reverse transcription complex into the nucleus, where it incorporates the viral genome into the host cell. This transport mechanism and condition is still unclear. We were able to do the experiments with fluorescent-labeled tRNA and monitored the real-time distribution of the tRNA.  I worked primarily for the modeling and numerical simulation of the process. We wish to find explanations for several features we observed from experiments by adding different basic transport modules to the model.