Dr John A. G. Briggs

Research Priorities: Structural Biology, Viruses, Cryo-Electron Microscopy, Tomography, Membrane Trafficking, Cellular Protein Complexes
John A.G. Briggs is a biochemist. His research interests focus on virus structures and biologically relevant cellular protein complexes, which he investigates using advanced cryo-electron microscopy techniques. He studies the lifecycles of pathogenic enveloped viruses and cellular machineries that mediate intracellular vesicular transport. Besides cryo-electron microscopy he also advances tomography and image analysis methods to study trafficking vesicles and enveloped viruses within native environments.
Elucidating complex viral and cellular structures by means of electron microscopy and in particular advanced cryo-electron microscopy is the main goal of John A.G. Briggs, for which he contributed innovative and pioneering research. In this way, he was able to perform detailed analyses of the architecture of mature and immature particles of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and related viruses. These studies provide insights into the mechanism of HIV particle assembly in the host cell and allow to draw conclusions about structural rearrangements during the process of viral maturation that are crucial for virus infectivity. Both processes are targets for new antiviral strategies. Other research by John A.G. Briggs focuses on the structure of other pathogenic viruses, e.g. the influenza virus and the Marburg virus.
Overall, the group is conducting research in three areas: Firstly, they are interested in the structure, assembly, and maturation of enveloped viruses, in particular HIV-1, influenza A virus and filoviruses. They study these processes using cryo-electron microscopy, tomography, biochemistry, and other complementary methods. Furthermore, the group use enveloped viruses as test systems for the development of data collection and image processing methods.
The second research area of the Briggs group focuses on coated vesicles transport material between the different compartments of the cell. They study how coated vesicles assemble, how they collect cargo, how they disassemble, and how these processes are regulated. To do this, they use “in situ” cryo-electron microscopy and tomography and reconstitute vesicle assembly using purified proteins and membranes in vitro.
John A.G. Briggs and his group work and perfect the fast-evolving cryo-electron microscopy and tomography techniques to find the location and spatial context of a protein complex at the same time as determining its structure, conformation and composition-within a single experiment. They work on the development of methods in the areas of sample preparation, data collection schemes, and image processing approaches for the analysis of big datasets. As model systems they use viruses and vesicles with properties convenient for testing and validating new methods.