NEWS Lars-Anders Carlson is receiving SEK 24 million from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation to understand how the virus factories that are built up in our cells work. "I remember the first meeting we had before the application with everyone involved over Zoom, it was in the middle of a brunch on my holiday in September 2023 and the coffee got cold, but it was worth it," says Lars-Anders Carlson, Associate professor at Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics.
Lars-Anders Carlson is receiving SEK 24 million from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation to understand how the virus factories that are built up in our cells work. Photo: Hans Karlsson
The project Lars-Anders Carlson will lead is called Conserved concepts and divergent details of membrane-bound viral replication organelles and he explains it briefly as follows:
"When the virus enters a cell, it must use the cell to replicate. But to do that, it has to rebuild inside the cell and optimise the cell to become what we can call a virus factory. The project aims to understand how this virus factory inside an infected cell is organised and how it works."
Viruses can infect both humans and animals and lead to a wide range of diseases, such as Covid and TBE, and the team will study and compare the virus factories of two major groups of viruses spread by mosquitoes and ticks.
"Our research is curiosity-driven basic research on a key part of the virus life cycle. In the long run, we hope to contribute with pieces of the puzzle that can lead to new forms of treatment."
One of the main reasons why Lars-Anders Carlson conducts his research in Umeå is due to the advanced electron microscopes that Umeå University can offer today. Lars-Anders Carlson's scientific journey otherwise started at Uppsala University, he did his PhD in Munich and his postdoc at the National Institute of Health in Washington DC and at the University of California in Berkeley, before moving to Umeå in 2016 for a position at the Wallenberg Centre for Molecular Medicine (WCMM).
"What we will do with the electron microscopes is to take three-dimensional close-ups of the viruses and thus learn more. Now I'm really looking forward to getting started and hiring and bringing new PhD students and researchers into the project!"
Lars-Anders Carlson emphasises that research is a team effort and wants to highlight everyone involved, mentioning Anna Överby Wernstedt, Department of Clinical Microbiology, and Richard Lundmark, Department of Medical and Translational Biology, both at Umeå University. From Karolinska Institutet, Gerald McInerney, Department of Microbiology, Tumour and Cell Biology, and Benjamin Murrell, Department of Microbiology, Tumour and Cell Biology, are involved. Within the project, they will also collaborate with Andreas Carlson, Department of Mathematics, University of Oslo, who will create mathematical models.
"The great thing about receiving a grant from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation is that it is such a clear stamp of quality; each project is evaluated by at least four or five international experts in the respective field and must have such high scientific potential that they have the possibility of leading to future scientific breakthroughs. The fact that they have chosen our project as one of the best feels very good, of course. This will be so damn fun!"
