Shamal Gunawardhana

Current Research: During the replication of many viruses, including Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) a large number of proteins assemble around the nucleic acid to form a neucleocapsid. This viral assembly is one of the few essential viral processes that can be interrupted by therapeutic agents. For HCV, the assembly of nucleocapsid is driven by interaction between the HCV core protein (HCVcp) and the genomic RNA. However, the nature of molecular mechanism between intrinsically disordered HCVcp and RNA very much unknown. To address this knowledge gap, in our research, we investigate the biophysical features and reaction kinetics of neucleocapsid assembly pathway of HCV using single-molecule Forster Resonance Energy Transfer (smFRET) coupled with microfluidic mixing devices.