Miller Lab 2024
About Us
Molecular mechanisms of RNA viruses of plants and humans
How cells decode the genetic code
Sustainable control of crop viruses and pests
Recent Publications
From a bunch of unstudied viral sequences "gathering digital dust" in GeneBank, we discovered an entirely new, rather quirky genus of twelve new tombusviruses - or at least their genomes. No one has isolated any of these viruses or knows what they actually infect. One viral genome we found in teosinte and maize in Mexico,also turned up in a tuatara in New Zealand! Kudos if you know what a tuatara is. To a molecular virologist, these viruses have some puzzling features. Lozier Z, Hill L, Semmann E and Miller WA (2024) A proposed new Tombusviridae genus featuring extremely long 5’ untranslated regions and a luteo/polerovirus-like gene block. Frontiers in Virology 4:1422934. doi: 10.3389/fviro.2024.1422934
Detailed step-by-step cookbook protocol for measuring the plant translatome (translation efficiency of all mRNAs) by ribosome profiling (ribo-seq). Sonia J, Kanodia P, Lozier Z, Miller WA (2024) Ribosome profiling of plants. In: Fontes, EP, Mäkinen, K (eds) Plant-Virus Interactions. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 2724. Humana, New York, NY
RiboVI, a statistical tool by collaborator Peng Liu's group, reveals more statistically significant changes in translation efficiencies of mRNAs detected by ribosome profiling. Walker DC, Lozier ZR, Bi R, Kanodia P, Miller WA, Liu P (2023) Variational inference for detecting differential translation in ribosome profiling studies. Frontiers in Genetics 14, 1178508.
A full-length infectious clone of cereal yellow dwarf virus-RPV that my lab (Randy Beckett) made many years ago, but never published, gets put to use by collaborators Yi Xu and Stewart Gray to reveal a key mutation in the viral suppressor of host innate immune response that may be favored in this warming climate. Cai L, Dang M, Yang Y, Mei R, Li F, Tao X, Palukaitis P, Beckett R, Miller WA, Gray SM, Xu Y (2023) Naturally occurring substitution of an amino acid in a plant virus gene-silencing suppressor enhances viral adaptation to increasing thermal stress. PLoS Pathogens 19, e1011301
Pleased to be 1 of 156 expert virologists to co-author a commentary urging for more research on viruses, in response to politicians and influencers touting fake news of virus lab leaks, etc. We need virus research more than ever! Virology under the Microscope—a Call for Rational Discourse. Journal of Virology 97 e00089-23, mBio 14 e00188-23, mSphere 8
Deep sequencing reveals new viruses in maize and teosinte! Ryan R. Lappe, Manjula G. Elmore, Zachary R. Lozier, Georg Jander, W. Allen Miller and Steven A. Whitham (2022) Metagenomic identification of novel viruses of maize and teosinte in North America. BMC Genomics 23:767.
