Peter Askovich

Peter Askovich

Area of Expertise
Viral Pathogenesis
Proteomics

Current Position
Senior Research Scientist

Degree
M.D. University of Belgrade, Serbia 1992.
Ph.D. University of Mississippi Medical Center, Jackson, MS 1998

Research Interests
Virus-host interactions are very complex. In order to understand the significance of each single component of that interaction, we have to look at it in the context of the complete host response. Often it is very hard to tell whether an observed change is the cause of disease or just correlates with disease progression (e.g. a reaction to tissue damage). Virus strains which are genetically closely related but differ greatly in their pathogenicity can provide us with invaluable insight into the disease mechanisms.

Selected Publications

Makhortova NR, Askovich SP, Patterson CE, Gechman LA, Gerard NP, Rall GF. 2007. Neurokinin-1 enables measles virus trans-synaptic spread in neurons. Virology. 2007 May 25;362(1):235-44.

Fung KY, Askovic S, Basile F, Duncan MW. 2004 A simple and inexpensive approach to interfacing high-performance liquid chromatography and matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization-time of flight-mass spectrometry. Proteomics. 4(10):3121-7.

Peltier J.M., Askovic S., Becklin R.R., Chepanoske C.L., Ho Y.J., Kery V., Lai S., Mujtaba T., Pyne M., Robbins P., von Rechenberg M., Richardson B., Savage J., Sheffield P., Thompson S., Weir L., Widjaja K., Xu N., Zhen Y., Boniface J.J. 2004. An integrated strategy for the discovery of drug targets by the analysis of protein-protein interactions. International Journal of Mass Spectrometry. 238:119-130

Dimcheff, D. E., Askovic, S. Baker, A. H., Johnson-Fowler, C., and Portis, J. L. 2003. Endoplasmic reticulum stress is a determinant of retrovirus-induced spongiform neurodegeneration. J Virol. 77(23):12617-29.

Evans C. F., Redwine J. M., Patterson C. E., Askovic S. and Rall G. F. 2002. LCMV and the Central Nervous System: Uncovering Basic Principles of CNS Physiology and Virus-Induced Disease. Curr Top Microbiol Immunol. 263:177-196.

Askovic S., McAtee F. J., Favara C. and Portis J. L. 2001. Increased expression of MIP-1 and MIP-1 mRNA in the brain correlates spatially and temporally with the spongiform neurodegeneration induced by a murine oncornavirus. J Virol. 75:2665-2674.

Askovic S., McAtee F. J., Favara C. and Portis J. L. 2000. Characterization of the brain infection by neuroinvasive, but avirulent murine oncornaviruses. J. Virol. 74:465-73.

Askovic S., Taylor W. and Baumann R. 1998. The Position of ZEBRA activation domain does not influence its biological activity. Virus Research. 57:125-138.

Askovic S. and Baumann R. 1997. Activation domain requirements for disruption of EBV latency by ZEBRA. J. Virol. 71:6547-6554.

Askovic S. and Baumann R. 1997. An alternative system for detecting and mapping activation domains. Biotechniques 22:948-951.

Baumann R., Warren G. and Askovic S. 1995. Restoration of the Epstein-Barr Virus ZEBRA protein's capacity to disrupt latency by the addition of heterologous activation regions. Virology 211:64-72