David Wang, Ph.D.

DEPARTMENT OF Molecular Microbiology
Keywords: microbial pathogenesis, functional genomics, virology, genome analysis, computational biology

Research in the laboratory is focused on the identification and characterization of novel or unrecognized viral pathogens in human and animal diseases. This is motivated by the fact that the etiologies of many diseases remain cryptic; for example, ~70% of cases of viral encephalitis and ~30% of respiratory tract infections defy the most sophisticated diagnostic tests used today, suggesting that unknown agents are likely to be involved in the pathogenesis of these diseases. Furthermore, newly emerging viruses or ‘outbreaks’ such as sin nombre hantavirus (1992), nipah virus (1998) and SARS (2003) pose constant threats to public health and accentuate the need to develop novel methods for viral identification. Toward this end, we have developed a DNA microarray harboring the most highly conserved 70mer oligonucleotide sequences from every fully sequenced viral genome in GenBank. Strategic targeting of the conserved regions of viral genomes enables not only massively parallel analysis of essentially all known viruses, but also maximizes the probability of detecting unknown viruses. During the recent SARS outbreak, hybridization patterns observed using the pan-viral microarray helped identify SARS as a novel coronavirus, demonstrating the power and utility of this approach. Ongoing research includes microarray and high-throughput sequencing based pathogen identification projects analyzing respiratory tract infections, central nervous system disorders, cancer, and acute human and animal diseases of unknown etiology. These projects are multidisciplinary and draw upon the tools of genomics, molecular virology, epidemiology, clinical investigation and computational biology.