Prof. Peter D. Nagy from University of Kentucky delivered a speech on yeast at the Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences on Dec. 18, 2015.

Prof. Nagy presented the advantages of using simple yeast model as a host to facilitate the general understanding of virus–host interactions in his talk.

The yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is an advanced model organism. It has emerged as an effective host to gain insights into the intricate interactions of viruses and host cells.

To identify the host factors subverted by viruses, high-throughput genomics and global proteomics approaches have been performed with tomato bushy stunt virus(TBSV). Accordingly, several hundred susceptibility and restriction factors for TBSV have been identified using yeast as a model host.

He also gave new insights of virus evolution according to emerging advances of plant/human-virus interactions.

Prof. Nagy has a high reputation in the field of Plant RNA virus and virus-host interaction, especially in positive-sense RNA plant virus. He focuses on plant-virus interaction and virus evolution in Department of Plant Pathology, University of Kentucky.