Jenna Eschbach

Program: Plant and Microbial Biosciences

Current advisor: Sebla B. Kutluay, PhD

Undergraduate university: Truman State University, 2017

Enrollment year: 2019

Research summary
Investigating the role of capsid stability in innate immune sensing of HIV-1 cores

Recent studies have suggested that the HIV-1 capsid may shield viral nucleic acids from host sensor proteins that initiate antiviral responses. I am directly testing whether tampering with the stability of the capsid lattice results in premature exposure and innate sensing of viral RNA or reverse transcription products in infected cells.

Graduate publications
Eschbach JE, Puray-Chavez M, Mohammed S, Wang Q, Xia M, Huang L-C, Shan L, Kutluay S. 2024 HIV-1 capsid stability and reverse transcription are finely balanced to minimize sensing of reverse transcription products via the cGAS-STING pathway. mBio, 15(5):e0034824. PMCID: PMC11077976

Shema Mugisha C, Dinh T, Kumar A, Tenneti K, Eschbach JE, Davis K, Gifford R, Kvaratskhelia M, Kutluay SB. 2022 Emergence of Compensatory Mutations Reveals the Importance of Electrostatic Interactions between HIV-1 Integrase and Genomic RNA. mBio, 13(5):e0043122. PMCID: PMC9601147

Puray-Chavez M, LaPak KM, Schrank TP, Elliott JL, Bhatt DP, Agajanian MJ, Jasuja R, Lawson DQ, Davis K, Rothlauf PW, Liu Z, Jo H, Lee N, Tenneti K, Eschbach JE, Puray-Chavez M, LaPak KM, Schrank TP, Elliott JL, Bhatt DP, Agajanian MJ, Jasuja R, Lawson DQ, Davis K, Rothlauf PW, Liu Z, Jo H, Lee N, Tenneti K, Eschbach JE, Shema Mugisha C, Cousins EM, Cloer EW, Vuong HR, VanBlargan LA, Bailey AL, Gilchuk P, Crowe JE Jr, Diamond MS, Hayes DN, Whelan SPJ, Horani A, Brody SL, Goldfarb D, Major MB, Kutluay S. 2021 Systematic analysis of SARS-CoV-2 infection of an ACE2-negative human airway cell. Cell Rep, 36(2):109364. PMCID: PMC8220945

Eschbach JE, Elliott JL, Li W, Zadrozny KK, Davis K, Mohammed SJ, Lawson DQ, Pornillos O, Engelman AN, Kutluay SB. 2020 Capsid lattice destabilization leads to premature loss of the viral genome and integrase enzyme during HIV-1 infection. J Virol, 95(2):e00984-20. PMCID: PMC7944438