Kayla co-authored with Dr. Marvin Whiteley the Research Briefings article that accompanies their co-authored Nature paper on a Pseudomonas noncoding RNAs.
June 4, 2023
Dominique wins the overall lifting championship and creates various state records at USPA Ghost Strong Open in Arlington, TX
July 31, 2021
Dominique steps back on platform after two years at the USPA Ghost Strong Open in Arlington, TX and wins on best overall male lifter in addition to following catagories. He also won the first place in th 90kg class.
| Category | Number |
| Squat | 617.29lbs/280kg (state record) |
| Bench Deadlift Total | 451.9lbs/205kg* (state record) 716.5lbs/325kg PR 1,785.69lbs/810kg PR (state record) |
Congratulations to Nicholas!
June 22, 2021
Meet the 2021 Dean’s Honored Graduates
Nicholas Alexander Cerda: Graduating with an Honors B.S. in Biology in the Dean’s Scholars Honors Program
The lab publishes a paper demonstrating DUSP11 regulates sensitivity of invoking the RIG-I response.
September 28, 2020
Yating won second prize for this year’s RNA & DNA club best presentation awards.
May 28, 2019
LASA High School student and Sullivan Lab intern Natalie presents her work from the last year. Congrats to Natalie and looking forward to her future time at a UT Austin undergrad.
May 13, 2019
Alcalde covers our work on bovine leukemia virus
November 2, 2018
UT Austin Researchers Use Virus That Killed Bevo XIV to Fight Hepatitis C
KVUE interviews Chris and Rodney on our DUSP11 work and control of HepC virus
October 29, 2018
Even after his death, Longhorns mascot Bevo XIV could save lives, UT Austin researchers say
The Daily Texan quotes Chris and Rodney on the value of study animal viruses and undergrad research
October 21, 2018
Disease that killed Bevo XIV holds clues to understanding human disease
Local TV news KXAN covers our work on what animal viruses can teach us about human disease
October 1, 2018
Cancer that killed Bevo XIV could hold clues for human illnesses
KVUE covers our lab’s approach of studying animal viruses to learn about human disease
October 1, 2018
UT Austin Longhorn wins Nobel Prize for work fighting cancer
The Austin American Statesman covers Rodney’s paper on the virus that killed BevoXIV and HCV
August 10, 2018
Bevo XIV died from bovine leukemia; His body is helping researchers fight human hepatitis C
PLoS Pathogens press release for our recent papillomavirus work
July 26, 2018
UT Austin press release on our recent HCV work
July 26, 2018
Joon is awarded a Hamilton Seed Grant for interdisciplinary research. Congrats Joon!
April 3, 2018
Chris is quoted in article about the March for Science
April 2, 2018
Joon selected to give a talk at 2018 Keystone Noncoding RNAs meeting
January 1, 2018
Yating shares in top prize for best poster and received invited talk at the 2017 ICMB Retreat
July 7, 2017
Chris’ talk at ASV2017 gets mention in Nature Micro Blog
June 29, 2017
Chris is quoted in Scientist Magazine on recent developments in mammalian RNAi
June 21, 2017
Related letter on this topic to TWiV: http://www.microbe.tv/
Our first preprint, describing our easy method for generating effective silencing RNAs using only 100 bp total vector coding space
May 9, 2017
Victor wins best presentation award for UT Undergrad Research Symposium Fall 2016.
September 3, 2016
Nicole wins “Excellence in Molecular Biology Research Award at UT Austin Undergrad Research Forum
April 20, 2016
Sullivan Lab alumni Lydia has new(ish) gig as Program Director for NSF I-Corps program
April 3, 2016
Victor received Honorable Mention for the Goldwater Scholarship
January 1, 2016
February 1, 2015
When it comes to viruses, those that transiently infect their hosts and cause the most damage get a lot of attention. Hollywood makes movies about Ebola, or about fictional viruses that resemble souped-up versions of the 1918 pandemic flu.
Dr. Sullivan receives the NSF Career Award
February 18, 2014
January 2, 2014
RNA (ribonucleic acid) has come a long way in just a few short years. Once the ugly stepchild of the nucleic acids, it was thought to be a boring and simple intermediary that only decoded DNA into proteins. That’s an important role, but only a sliver of its diverse set of functions.
McClure et al. paper highlighted as an “Article of Significant Interest”
December 1, 2013
Seo et al. CHM manuscript highlighted by Nature Reviews Microbiology
November 15, 2013
RNAi: challenging the dogma
In antiviral RNA interference (RNAi), virus-derived double-stranded RNA is processed by the endoribonuclease DICER into 21–23 nucleotide small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) that guide ARGONAUTE proteins to silence complementary viral RNA. As a counter-strategy, viruses express viral suppressors of RNAi (VSRs).
Dr. Christopher Sullivan is interviewed on This Week in Virology (TWiV) (podcast episode 255)
November 1, 2013
Chen et al. paper highlighted as an “Article of Significant Interest”
October 20, 2013
Divergent MicroRNA Targetomes of Closely Related Circulating Strains of a Polyomavirus
Hundreds of virus-encoded microRNAs (miRNAs) have been uncovered, but an in-depth functional understanding is lacking for most. A major challenge for the field is separating those miRNA targets that are biologically relevant from those that are not advantageous to the virus.
Mammalian Body Cells Lack Ancient Viral Defense Mechanism, Find UT Scientists
October 11, 2013
A team led by Chris Sullivan, a professor of molecular biosciences at The University of Texas at Austin, has provided the first positive evidence that RNA interference (RNAi), a biological process in which small RNA molecules prevent genes from being expressed, does not play a role as an antiviral in most body, or “somatic,” cells in mammals.
October 10, 2013
Chris is interviewed by The Scientist for comment on Science articles from the Ding and Voinnet Labs
October 10, 2013
Fighting Viruses with RNAi
Plants, fungi, and invertebrates use RNA interference (RNAi) to fend off invading viruses. Mammals, on the other hand, are known to contain RNAi machinery, but researchers have never been able to prove that they use the molecular obstruction strategy for fighting viruses.
CJ’s paper selected by Faculty of 1000
August 7, 2013
Divergent microRNA targetomes of closely related circulating strains of a polyomavirus.
Hundreds of virus-encoded microRNAs (miRNAs) have been uncovered, but an in-depth functional understanding is lacking for most. A major challenge for the field is separating those miRNA targets that are biologically relevant from those that are not advantageous to the virus. Here, we show that miRNAs from related variants of the polyomavirus simian vacuolating virus 40 (SV40) have differing host target repertoires (targetomes) while their direct autoregulatory activity on virus-encoded.
New commentary involving Rodney and James’ BLV paper
February 2, 2013
Retrovirus infected cells contain viral microRNAs
The encoding of microRNAs in retroviral genomes has remained a controversial hypothesis despite significant supporting evidence in recent years. A recent publication demonstrating the production of functional miRNAs from the retrovirus bovine leukemia virus adds further credence to the fact that retroviruses do indeed encode their own miRNAs.
Sullivan lab BW award video “boing boinged”
January 24, 2013
December 5, 2012
Fighting the Viral Wars
How are our body’s hidden viruses like little green army men? Well, they aren’t really. They’re much smaller. But we can use them to learn something about how certain viruses evade our immune system. Meet Dr. Chris Sullivan, virologist at the University of Texas at Austin.
Biologist Chris Sullivan aims to hunt down and destroy viruses where they hide
December 3, 2012
Chris Sullivan is working to outwit the evolutionary strategies of viruses, like herpes and HIV, that form persistent lifelong infections.Although his goal is to someday help destroy HIV and other viruses and retroviruses that form persistent, lifelong infections, biologist Chris Sullivan can’t help but admire the strategies that many of these viruses have evolved to evade our defenses.
Rodney receives a prestigious Powers Graduate Fellowship from UT Graduate School
December 1, 2012
August 13, 2012
MicroRNAs and Retroviral Integrity
Among retroviruses, the deltaretrovirus genus is something of a shady bunch, its members lurking in the shadows, causing trouble in the form of persistent infections that result in lymphomas and leukemias.
July 12, 2012
It is rare that high school students get the opportunity to work on a real research project in a state-of-the-art microbiology laboratory alongside faculty and graduate students at a premiere research university. But that’s exactly what 14 Austin students had the chance to do in July.
Chris receives the “Burroughs Wellcome Award”
May 15, 2012
BWF Announces 2012 Investigators in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease
The Burroughs Wellcome Fund Board of Directors approved support for 10 assistant professors, the 2012 Investigators in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease, at its May meeting. The award provides $500,000 for assistant professors to study the interaction of human and microbial biology.
March 1, 2012
MicroRNAs found for the first time in a retrovirus
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small non-coding RNAs that play a regulatory role in many cellular processes such as immune function, apoptosis and tumorigenesis.
In Vivo Magazine Spotlights Dr. Sullivan (pg. 10) and Oliver’s (Yao Tang Lin) research (pg. 17)
February 22, 2012
Commentary on Rodney and James’ PNAS paper
February 21, 2012
Although >250 viral microRNAs (miRNAs) are expressed by a range of nuclear DNA viruses, efforts to identify miRNAs expressed by RNA viruses have so far been in vain (1, 2). In PNAS, Kincaid et al. (3) report the identification of five miRNAs encoded by the delta retrovirus bovine leukemia virus (BLV) that are expressed in BLV-transformed B cells.
MicrobiologyBytes talks about the significance of RNA viruses making miRNAs
February 2, 2012
First RNA virus-encoded miRNAs
Although the first miRNA was identified 18 years ago, it was only in 2001, with the development of technologies that allowed the efficient cDNA cloning and sequencing of small RNA species, that it became apparent that all multicellular eukaryotes encode numerous members of this class of small regulatory RNAs. Shortly after the identification of the first human miRNAs, the first virally encoded miRNAs were reported in the human herpesvirus Epstein–Barr virus (EBV)
Dr. Sullivan receives the College of Natural Sciences Teaching Excellence Award
December 1, 2011
2011 Teaching Awards
Molecular Genetics & Microbiology
Dr. Sullivan selected as Kavli Fellow
October 18, 2011
Distinguished Young Scientists Selected to Participate in Kavli Frontiers of Science Symposia
One hundred twenty-two of the nation’s brightest young scientists from industry, academia, and government have been selected to take part in the National Academy of Sciences’ U.S. and Chinese-American Kavli Frontiers of Science symposia. These three-day events bring together scientists who are 45 or younger and engaged in exceptional research in a variety of disciplines.
“Virus Hunters” University of Texas, College of Natural Sciences News Letter
November 1, 2010
In his race to be the first scientist in the world to find a nematode virus, Chris Sullivan had an unusual team of field biologists aiding him this summer—eight high school kids from in and around Austin. Laura, a high school student from Austin, hunts for nematode viruses in one of the micro-environments at the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center
February 1, 2010
High-school student interns received a crash course in viruses, field ecology and lab work when they joined undergraduates and researchers at The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) in their attempt to isolate a nematode virus.