Debra Ragland
Lecturer
University of Massachusetts Medical School, USA
USA
Biography
During my thesis work in Dr. Celia Schiffer's laboratory, I was tasked with defining and understanding the role of mutations outside of the active site of the HIV-1 protease as it pertains to drug resistance. Briefly, mutations outside of the active site were generally accepted as having compensatory roles to restore enzyme fitness but through my thesis work I was able to determine their direct roles in drug resistance and also pinpoint which mutations underlie changes in various biochemical properties that are essential to drug binding. I also worked very closely with the laboratory of Dr. Ronald Swanstrom over the duration of this project for use of variants they acquired during viral passaging studies. I am still very interested in developing computational techniques to aid in the study of infectious diseases.
Research Interest
Structural Biology, Computational Biology, Bioinformatics