Nina Papavasiliou

Papavasiliou's research centers on demystifying how cells and organisms diversify and expand the information encoded in their genomes, both at the DNA and RNA level. She opened her Laboratory of Lymphocyte Biology at Rockefeller University in 2001 as an assistant professor.^[5] Much of her group's early work was done in the context of the adaptive immune response, which is able to combat a wide array of pathogens seeking to invade the host by rapidly generating novel antibodies that are able to specifically recognize a given invader. Her group has worked to characterize the activity of an enzyme known as activation-induced cytidine deaminase (AID).^[6][7] AID changes cytidine (C) residues to uracil (U) in DNA, which is recognized as DNA damage and repaired in such a way that introduces thymidine (T), effectively mutating Cs to Ts in DNA. The process is known as somatic hypermutation and is how B cells can rapidly introduce DNA mutations into receptors that recognize the invaders, known as antigens. Papavasiliou's lab has worked to understand how AID expression is regulated in the immune system and how AID targets certain genes for mutation.^[8][9][10]

Papavasiliou also studies RNA editing in the context of the innate immune response using next-generation sequencing and bioinformatics approaches to identify and characterize RNA editing targets. Her group first identified novel RNA editing targets of APOBEC1, which mutates a cytosine to a uracil in an RNA transcript, and was previously thought to only edit Apolipoprotein B (apoB) in the small intestine.^[11] Her group has since moved on to attempt to characterize the potential role APOBEC1-editing may be playing outside of its function with apoB.^[12]

Papavasiliou most recently branched out to studying mechanisms of antigenic variation—or how pathogens vary their surface proteins to escape the immune response—using Trypanosoma brucei, the parasite that causes African sleeping sickness, as a model organism. Her group has developed new tools to better understand the dynamics of protein coat switching in trypanosomes, and is working to better understand the mechanisms by which trypanosomes are able to diversify their coat proteins over the course of an infection.^[13][14][15]

In 2016, Papavasiliou moved to the German Cancer Research Center to begin her lab in the Division of Immune Diversity with additional support from a European Research Council Consolidator Grant.^[16][17]

• Keck Fellow, 2002^[18]
• Searle Scholar, 2003^[19]
• Sinsheimer Fund Scholar, 2005^[20]
• Thorbecke Award, Society for Leukocyte Biology, 2006^[21]
• The Vilcek Foundation Prize Finalist for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science, 2009^[22]
• National Institutes of Health Director’s Transformative Research Project Award, 2011^[23]