The Wan lab seeks a mechanistic understanding of viral life cycles and replication through structural biology.

Viruses are biological assemblies that package their genetic information and a minimum set of molecular machinery required to hijack host cells in order to reproduce. Phases of a viral life cycle include uptake into, replication with, and exit from host cells.

We seek to understand how the viral machinery, in concert with host cell machinery, carry out these viral life cycles. To accomplish this, we use structural biology and related methods to directly visualize the molecular machinery and elucidate their functions.