John Taylor
Senior Member, Fox Chase Cancer Center

Microbiology, Virology and Parasitology Program

Address

room R-295, Riemann Building,
Fox Chase Cancer Center,
333 Cottman Avenue,
Philadelphia, PA 19111-2497

Office tel.: 215 728-2436
Lab tel.: 215 728-2432
Fax: 215 728-3105
E-mail: JM_Taylor@FCCC.edu

Link(s)

Dr. Taylor's Fox Chase Page

Education

University of Melbourne: BSc (Physics), 1962.

University of Melbourne: MSc (Nuclear Physics), 1964.

University of Toronto: PhD (Cell Biology), 1968.

Research Interests

• Human hepatitis delta virus (HDV) is an infectious agent found in nature only in association with hepatitis B virus (HBV). In fact, HDV is less than a virus in that it needs help from HBV to carry out a cycle of replication. Our efforts are directed towards understanding the structure and replication of HDV, and the nature of its interactions with HBV.

Key words hepatitis delta, RNA transcription, RNA processing, miRNA, virus attachment and entry.

Search PubMed for articles

Description of Research

HDV research offers several unique and tantalizing problems in cell and molecular biology. The prime example is that the RNA genome is able to redirect a host polymerase to the HDV RNA template.

Recent Publications

Taylor, J.M., Farci, P., Purcell, R.H. Hepatitis delta virus. In Fields Virology, eds. Knipe and Howley, Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins, 2007, pp. 3031-3046..

Gudima, S., He, Y., Meier, A., Chang, J., Chen, R., Jarnik, M., Nicolas, E., Bruss, V., Taylor, J. Assembly of hepatitis delta virus: particle characterization including ability to infect primary human hepatocytes. J. Virol., 81: 3607-3617, 2007.

Gudima, S., Meier, A., Dunbrack, R., Taylor, J., Bruss, V. Two potentially important elements of the hepatitis B virus large envelope protein are dispensable for the infectivity of hepatitis delta virus.J. Virol. 81: 4343-4347, 2007.

Chai, N., Gudima, S., Chang, J., Taylor, J. Immunoadhesins containing pre-S domains of hepatitis B virus large envelope protein are secreted and inhibit virus infection. J. Virol., 81: 4912-4918, 2007.

Chai, N., Gudima, S., Chang, H., Chang, J., Taylor, J. Hepatitis B virus envelope proteins can be assembled onto a lentivirus vector that specifically and efficiently infects primary human hepatocytes. J. Virol., in press.

Lab

Rotation Projects

Currently there are two main research areas in this lab. Both are concerned hepatitis delta virus (HDV), a subviral agent that replicates using the envelope proteins of hepatitis B virus (HBV) as a helper virus.

The first area addresses how the small circular RNA genome of HDV can be copied by redirection of the host RNA polymerase II. This seemingly unique situation has wider implications in that we are trying to understand how RNA molecules either act as templates or are inhibited from acting as templates for host RNA polymerases.

The second area concerns how HDV is assembled into virus particles and how these infect primary human hepatocytes, the normal and restricted host cell for this virus. The wider significance of these studies is that we are at the same time obtaining information that also applies to HBV. That is, we are determining how HBV is able to attach to and infect susceptible cells. This is a major unsolved question for what is the major cause worldwide of chronic liver disease and hepatocellular carcinoma.

Lab personnel:

John Taylor - Senior Member (Fox Chase Cancer Center) and Adjunct Assoc. Prof. (U. of Penn)
Severin Gudima - Research Associate
Ziying Han - Research Associate
Ning Chai - Postdoctoral Fellow
Xingcao Nie - Postdoctoral Fellow
Ho Eun Chang - Graduate Student