Elizabeth McFadden

This is my first, first-author paper of my PhD and is a reminder of my growth over the last several years and the excellent training and mentorship I've received from @McLellan_Lab. Thanks to all who contributed to this work! (3/3)

In this paper, we engineer glycoprotein complexes from Crimean–Congo hemorrhagic fever virus, solve structures, and test immunogenicity to gain insights into how the proteins funtion in the viral life cycle and bring forth promising reagents for further vaccine design. (2/3)

I'm happy to announce that our paper is now online in Cell! This study was the result of a highly collaborative effort from many scientists. Please read it here: cell.com/cell/fulltext/… (1/3)

We tracked a pandemic decimating beetle colonies and used cryoEM for sequencing-free discovery of the new virus that caused it. This virus is crazy; parvoviruses aren't supposed to have such structured protein-DNA interactions. We fulfilled all 4 of Koch's postulates for etiology

Very excited to share this story about two substitutions in a sarbecovirus spike that enhance infectivity by increasing RBD availability. My first cryoEM structure was of the RsSHC014-CoV spike protein and is included in this manuscript! biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

I've been playing around with AlphaFold3 since the server was released and, like others have noted, I'm seeing a lot of odd pathological behaviors. For instance, when given 2 copies of this particular protein (+lipids), it more or less just superimposes the structures 1/n

Check out our pre-print describing a CCHFV glycoprotein complex in the pre-fusion conformation! We used several engineering tricks to design our final construct, GP38-GnH-DS-Gc. Great collaborative effort, led by graduate student @Eliza4Science! biorxiv.org/cgi/content/sh…

Great article in the @washingtonpost by @Carolynyjohnson on the development of structure-based RSV vaccines! It's an exciting time in the field given the recent positive phase III results from @GSK and @pfizer. washingtonpost.com/health/2022/10…