Andrea C. Timm, PhD

Research Title: Development of Single-Cell Techniques to Investigate Heterogeneity in Virus-Cell Interactions

Research Summary: Andrea Timm contributed to developing and applying a micro-well array technology and quantitative imaging to characterize the kinetics of virus-host interactions at the single cell level. To enable real-time tracking of vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) infection and cellular response Andrea employed kinetically matched two-color fluorescent reporters, one encoded by the virus and the other stably integrated in human prostate cancer (PC3) host cells as a reporter of IFIT2 promoter activity, an interferon stimulated gene. The kinetic reporter profiles for hundreds to thousands of individual cells provide a perspective into virus-cell interactions that are masked by conventional population level measures.