Biological Science Faculty Member
Dr. Ashwanth Francis
- Office: 502 Kasha Laboratory
- Office: (850) 644-8979
- Area: Cell and Molecular Biology
- Lab: 510 and 513 Kasha Laboratory Building
- Lab: (850) 645-1335
- Mail code: 4380
- E-mail: acfrancis@fsu.edu
Ph.D. Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy 2014
Graduate Faculty Status
Dr. Ashwanth Francis is currently recruiting new postdoctoral investigators.
Research and Professional Interests:
The scope of my research program is to understand how viruses reach their replication centers within the nucleus of living cells. Our laboratory uses a combination of quantitative live-cell imaging, single virus tracking and correlative light and cryo-EM (CLEM) techniques to gain mechanistic and structural insights into virus-host interactions, during the many distinct stages of virus replication.
Selected Publications:
Francis AC#, Cereseto A, Singh PK, Shi J, Poeschla E, Engelman AN, Aiken C, Melikyan GB#. Localization and functions of native and eGFP-tagged capsid proteins in HIV-1 particles. PLoS Pathog. 2022 Aug 11;18(8):e1010754. doi: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1010754. PMID: 35951676; PMCID: PMC9426931.
Francis AC, Marin M, Singh PK, Achuthan V, Prellberg MJ, Palermino-Rowland K, Lan S, Tedbury PR, Sarafianos SG, Engelman AN, Melikyan GB. HIV-1 replication complexes accumulate in nuclear speckles and integrate into speckle-associated genomic domains. Nat. Commun. 2020 Jul 14;11(1):3505. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-17256-8. [PMCID: PMC7360574].
Francis AC, Marin M, Prellberg MJ, Palermino-Rowland K, Melikyan GB. HIV-1 Uncoating and Nuclear Import Precede the Completion of Reverse Transcription in Cell Lines and in Primary Macrophages. Viruses. 2020 Oct 30;12(11). doi: 10.3390/v12111234. [PMCID: PMC7693591]
Francis AC, Melikyan GB. Live-Cell Imaging of Early Steps of Single HIV-1 Infection. Viruses. 2018 May 19;10(5). PMCID: PMC5977268.
Francis AC and Melikyan GB. Single HIV-1 Imaging Reveals Progression of Infection through CA-Dependent Steps of Docking at the Nuclear Pore, Uncoating, and Nuclear Transport. Cell Host Microbe. 2018 Apr 11;23(4):536-548.e6. doi: 10.1016/j.chom.2018.03.009. [PMCID: PMC5901770]
Sood C*, Francis AC*, Desai TM, Melikyan GB. An improved labeling strategy enables automated detection of single-virus fusion and assessment of HIV-1 protease activity in single virions. J Biol Chem. 2017 Dec 8;292(49):20196-20207. PMCID: PMC5724006.
Francis AC, Marin M, Shi J, Aiken C, Melikyan GB. Time-Resolved Imaging of Single HIV-1 Uncoating In Vitro and in Living Cells. PLoS Pathog. 2016 Jun;12(6):e1005709. PMCID: PMC4913920.
Full List of Publications, click here