Lee Gehrke

About

Professor Lee Gehrke's research focuses principally on RNA viruses that have a positive sense genome. These viruses store their genetic code in RNA, which is ready to be translated into protein immediately upon infection and uncoating. His work distinguishes positive sense RNA viruses from negative sense viruses, which require conversion into a positive strand for translation. RNA viruses are considered more serious human health threats than DNA viruses. The Gehrke lab develops improved models for studying infectious diseases by infecting embryonic stem (ES) and induced pluripotent stem (iPS) derived cells with BSL2 and BSL3 neurotropic flaviviruses, including Dengue, Zika, Powassan, Deer Tick, West Nile, and Japanese Encephalitis virus. Additionally, his team works on developing low-cost, rapid diagnostics to detect emerging virus infections across various virus families such as flaviviruses, alphaviruses, filoviruses, and coronaviruses.

Research topics

• Virology
• Biology
• Immunology
• Medicine
• Neuroscience
• Pathology
• Genetics

Selected publications

• FcγR-mediated SARS-CoV-2 infection of monocytes activates inflammation

  Nature · 2022 · 573 citations

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Direct SARS-CoV-2 infection of the human inner ear may underlie COVID-19-associated audiovestibular dysfunction

  Communications Medicine · 2021-10-29 · 114 citations

  articleOpen access

  BACKGROUND: COVID-19 is a pandemic respiratory and vascular disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 virus. There is a growing number of sensory deficits associated with COVID-19 and molecular mechanisms underlying these deficits are incompletely understood. METHODS: We report a series of ten COVID-19 patients with audiovestibular symptoms such as hearing loss, vestibular dysfunction and tinnitus. To investigate the causal relationship between SARS-CoV-2 and audiovestibular dysfunction, we examine human inn…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Targeting stem-loop 1 of the SARS-CoV-2 5′ UTR to suppress viral translation and Nsp1 evasion

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2022-02-11 · 112 citations

  articleOpen access

  SARS-CoV-2 is a highly pathogenic virus that evades antiviral immunity by interfering with host protein synthesis, mRNA stability, and protein trafficking. The SARS-CoV-2 nonstructural protein 1 (Nsp1) uses its C-terminal domain to block the messenger RNA (mRNA) entry channel of the 40S ribosome to inhibit host protein synthesis. However, how SARS-CoV-2 circumvents Nsp1-mediated suppression for viral protein synthesis and if the mechanism can be targeted therapeutically remain unclear. Here, we…

  PublisherDOI

• Multiscale 3D phenotyping of human cerebral organoids

  Scientific Reports · 2020-12-08 · 87 citations

  articleOpen access

  Brain organoids grown from human pluripotent stem cells self-organize into cytoarchitectures resembling the developing human brain. These three-dimensional models offer an unprecedented opportunity to study human brain development and dysfunction. Characterization currently sacrifices spatial information for single-cell or histological analysis leaving whole-tissue analysis mostly unexplored. Here, we present the SCOUT pipeline for automated multiscale comparative analysis of intact cerebral org…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• SARS-CoV-2 infects blood monocytes to activate NLRP3 and AIM2 inflammasomes, pyroptosis and cytokine release

  medRxiv · 2021-03-08 · 77 citations

  preprintOpen access

  SARS-CoV-2 causes acute respiratory distress that can progress to multiorgan failure and death in some patients. Although severe COVID-19 disease is linked to exuberant inflammation, how SARS-CoV-2 triggers inflammation is not understood. Monocytes are sentinel blood cells that sense invasive infection to form inflammasomes that activate caspase-1 and gasdermin D (GSDMD) pores, leading to inflammatory death (pyroptosis) and processing and release of IL-1 family cytokines, potent inflammatory med…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• MMDx: A rapid multiplexed matrix code diagnostic for real time epidemiology

  NIH · $1.6M · 2012–2018

• 3D Models of Engineered Human iPS Cells to Investigate Neurotropic Virus Infections

  NIH · $14.4M · 2017–2024

• NIH Grant R01GM042504

  NIH · $4.2M · 2005

Frequent coauthors

• Irene Bosch

  91 shared

• Stephen A. Jobling

  Agriculture and Food

  52 shared

• Lanny J. Rosenwasser

  University of Missouri–Kansas City

  43 shared

• Benjamin R. McDonald

  Brown University

  40 shared

• Rudolf Jaenisch

  Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research

  39 shared

• Ann Durbin

  Harvard University

  37 shared

• L S Paik

  Harvard University

  36 shared

• Helena de Puig

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  35 shared

Labs

• Gehrke LabPI

Education

• Ph.D., Molecular Biology

  University of Wisconsin-Madison

  2002

• B.S., Biology

  University of California, San Diego

  1997

Similar researchers at Harvard University

• Joseph Sodroskih-184
• John Mekalanosh-147
• Harvey Cantorh-118