For the past four years, I have studied EBV-positive Burkitt’s Lymphoma as a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Dr. Erik Flemington, a leading virologist with a rich history of cell cycle, B cell tumor biology, and transcriptomics research. Historically, uncovering the strategies of successful tumor viruses has led to landmark discoveries that have dramatically improved our understanding of tumor biology. Our lab has long had an interest in EBV noncoding RNAs, the predominant class of viral transcript expressed in Burkitt’s Lymphoma. This research has resulted in a publication identifying, for the first time, an entire repertoire of circular RNAs expressed by EBV in tumor cells (Ungerleider et al, 2018 Plos Pathogens) as well as a follow-up study detailing the evolutionary conservation of these circular RNAs in human DNA tumor viruses (Ungerleider et al, 2019 J Virol). More recently, we found that viral microRNAs help promote Burkitt’s Lymphoma immune escape (Ungerleider et al, 2021 Plos Pathogens). During the course of this project, we noticed that EBV interferes with microRNA processing, likely having a global impact on host microRNA activity.
