Wesley Sundquist, PhD

Wesley Sundquist, PhD, is Samuels Professor and Co-Chair of the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Utah. He is also a member of the Cell Response and Regulation Program at Huntsman Cancer Institute.

Sundquist received a bachelor's degree from Carleton College, Minnesota, and a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His honors and awards include election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences

The Sundquist lab studies the cellular, molecular and structural biology of retroviruses, particularly HIV, and the roles of the ESCRT pathway in cell division and the abscission checkpoint. Major projects in our lab include studies of: 1) ESCRT pathway functions and regulation in cell division and cancer, 2) HIV budding, 3) HIV capsid structure, function and restriction, particularly by the TRIM5α system, 4) AAV egress, and 5) Designed enveloped protein nanoparticles. Our approaches include NMR, EM, crystallographic and computational studies of viral complexes, identification and biochemical analyses of the interactions between viral components and their cellular partners, and genetic analyses of viral and cellular protein functions.