Jun 5, 2020
Professor and virologist Marilyn
J. Roossinck describes her work and interesting elements of
virus behavior.
She tells listeners
Marilyn J. Roossinck, Ph.D. is a
professor in plant pathology and environmental microbiology and
biology. She’s at the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics at the
Huck Institute of Life Sciences at Pennsylvania State
University.
She describes for listeners how she first became interested in the
field of virology and where that interest took her. Because
viruses evolve rapidly, they can be a helpful vehicle for
observing evolutionary processes. One of her early studies involved
watching virus mutations of RNA viruses, noting the diversity of
their populations.
She then describes the work she’s done with the cucumber mosaic virus. Because the virus infects about 1,200 different species, they could compare virus evolution by starting with clones of the cucumber mosaic virus and see how the exact same virus progressed differently among host plants. Contrary to general thought, they found the virus behavior and diversity was dependent on the host plant.
She discusses some other studies including on a virus that has coevolved with the jalapeno and other pepper plants and what that plant virus accomplishes for that plant. She also talks about her work on a virus found in fungi that inhabit geothermal soil and viruses in Costa Rican plants. She explains how this work has caused her to think of viruses differently, as beneficial for the most part. In fact, she says pathogenic viruses are actually quite rare.
For more about her work, see roossincklab.com.