Stanislava Chtarbanova
University of Alabama, AL·Microbiology & Immunology
Older people catch viral infections more often and suffer more severe illness and higher death rates than younger adults. An aged body may also be a place where viruses build up mutations and could give rise to new, more dangerous strains.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Biology
Genetics
- Topics
aging
host-virus interactions
viral infection
- Grants
- 1 known grant, last ended Aug 2026
What they work on
- Determine whether older fruit flies survive Flock House Virus infection through infection tolerance, by changing their metabolism to limit damage, using genetic, molecular and metabolic methods.
- Compare viral genome structure, including defective viral genomes, after Flock House Virus replicates in old versus young Drosophila over several passages, using next-generation sequencing.
- Test whether increased oxidative stress in aged flies drives changes in the virus, using genetic and pharmacological approaches, and measure how harmful candidate viral variants are.
More about the research
It is not known whether the processes governing virus–host interactions differ with age. As the world's population grows older, understanding how aged organisms survive infection and limit viral spread is becoming urgent.
Why it matters
The mechanisms studied in flies are likely to be shared with humans. Learning how aged hosts survive viral infection and shape viral evolution could point to better treatments for older patients with viral infections. It could also help prevent new, more dangerous virus strains from emerging in elderly populations.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Shelbi Russell
University of California-Santa Cruz, CA·Microbiology & Immunology
Track genome evolution in Drosophila cell lines carrying mixed infections of several Wolbachia strains, to capture rare horizontal transmission events between hosts.
Michal Polak
University of Cincinnati, OH·Ecology & Evolution
Test for trade-offs between evolved resistance to mite ectoparasites and major life-history traits such as reproductive output in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster.
Robert J Duronio
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC·Genetics
Determine what is required for the coordinated production of replication-dependent histone mRNAs, using biochemical and genetic approaches in Drosophila to test the role of the Histone Locus Body, the nuclear structure that assembles at clustered histone genes.
The school
University of Alabama: 22 labs on PI Pages, $221M a year on research, 235 research doctorates a year.
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