Members of the Agbandje-McKenna lab group co-authored an article, Atomic Resolution Structures of Human Bufaviruses Determined by Cryo-Electron Microscopy, which was published in the January 2018 issue of the Virus journal and featured on the journal cover.
The writing group includes Maria Ilyas, Mario Mietzsch, 
Shweta Kailasan, Elina Väisänen, Mengxiao Luo, Paul Chipman, J. Kennon Smith, Justin Kurian, Duncan Sousa, Robert McKenna, Maria Söderlund-Venermo and Mavis Agbandje-McKenna.
The conclusions of this study report the first structures determined for human-infecting members of the Protoparvovirus genus, which until recently, contained only animal infecting members. Significantly, while the structure conserved the VP topology of other members of this genus, a deletion and conformational difference at one of the loops forming the 3-fold region results in capsid surface morphology that resembles the other human-infecting parvoviruses from other genera. This suggests a host-specific function for the separated arrangement of the protrusions surrounding the 3-fold region. These structures will aid future efforts at functional annotation.
The Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology congratulates the Agbandje-McKenna lab on this publication!
For more information on the Dr. Mavis Agbandje-McKenna’s lab, click here.