Jessica Tang Awarded Ann G. Wylie Dissertation Fellowship

Juanjie (Jessica) Tang, a graduate student in the Molecular and Cellular Biology (MOCB) program at the University of Maryland was recently awarded an Ann G. Wylie Dissertation Fellowship from the Graduate School. These fellowships are one-semester awards intended to support outstanding doctoral students who are in the final stages of writing their dissertation and whose primary source of support is unrelated to their dissertation. Ms. Tang is a predoctoral student working in the laboratory of Dr. Louisa Wu, Associate Professor in the University of Maryland’s Institute for Biotechnology and Bioscience Research and the Department of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics.

The title of Ms. Tang’s research is "Identification and Characterization of a Novel Antiviral Gene rogue in Drosophila melanogaster".  Fruit flies, or Drosophila melanogaster, are ideal models for studying the innate immune system. The advantages of this model include: 1) the ability to use genetics to identify and characterize new mutations, (2) the genomic resources which make it easier to clone the corresponding genes and manipulate them in vivo and (3) the fact that many biological processes are conserved between flies and humans.  Ms. Tang’s project has used this model system to isolate and describe a novel gene that affects fly immune pathways and plays a role in restricting viral replication. This finding may provide broad insight on the development of genetic targets to combat virus-caused diseases.

The work in Dr. Wu’s lab focuses on mechanisms of the innate immune response. The long-term goal of the lab is to take the information from studies of Drosophila immunity and use it for the identification and development of promising genetic targets for regulating inflammatory responses or for augmenting host resistance to bacterial infections in humans.