John Yin

Theoretical and experimental approaches to understand how viruses grow and evolve

We aim to advance a quantitative and integrated understanding how viruses grow and their infections spread. We are developing experimental systems and computational simulations for three single-stranded RNA viruses: vesicular stomatitis virus, a negative-sense RNA virus; and human rhinovirus (HRV) and Zika (ZIKV) virus, both positive-sense RNA viruses. Quantitative experiments are enabling the development of predictive models of growth and spread. Our recent studies entail high-throughput measures of single-cell infections, dual-color virus and host-cell reporters of virus-host interactions, single-cell measures of virus-DIP(defective interfering particle) interaction. Overall, our approaches are directed toward a deeper ‘systems level’ understanding of how viruses grow and cause disease, and we aim to exploit such understanding to develop novel anti-viral strategies that resist escape.