OUR PHILOSOPHY

Viruses such as HIV are obligate parasites – they use the host they infect to facilitate their lifecycle, all while avoiding antiviral mechanisms put in place to stop them. The Fregoso Lab wants to understand how that happens, how that came to be, and what we can do to get ahead of these viruses.

OUR APPROACH
The overall goal of the Fregoso Lab is to better understand the lifecycle of lentiviruses such as HIV-1 and HIV-2. We strive to identify and characterize host proteins that regulate the lentiviral lifecycle, and to uncover the molecular constraints governing viral evolution and adaptation. We take a unique interdisciplinary approach to study these interactions by combining molecular virology, biochemistry, and evolutionary biology.  Through our combined functional and evolutionary framework, we are able to uncover important viral-host interactions that are necessary for lentiviral pathogenesis and evolution. As HIV represents a major burden to human health, particularly in underserved populations, we hope that our research will contribute to the global fight against this pandemic virus.