Contact Information
kmajumder@wisc.edu
(608) 262-6386
741A RM Bock Labs
Education
Title
Research Description
The Majumder Laboratory investigates how viruses navigate the nuclear compartment to target cancer cells for oncolysis, persist long-term as gene therapy vectors or cause oncogenic progression. Small DNA viruses in the nucleus induce DNA damage, generating sites to establish viral replication centers and modify the local nuclear environment. We seek to elucidate the molecular mechanisms by which these small DNA viruses localize to cellular DNA breaks, induce additional DNA damage and generate chromosomal aberrations long-term. We study where viral genomes localize using genomics and single-cell imaging, inducible DNA damage systems to investigate the kinetics of virus-DNA break interaction and single-molecule biophysics to study changes in eukaryotic replisomes caused by viral infection. The findings from our work are applicable to understand the biology of small DNA viruses such as HPV and HBV, which are oncogenic, oncolytic parvoviruses and for gene therapy applications using modified AAV parvoviruses.