Welcome to the lab page of Gary Cohen and Roselyn Eisenberg. We run our lab as an equal partnership. Even though one of us is in the Dental School (Gary) and the other is in the Veterinary School (Roz), both of us are at the University of Pennsylvania and share laboratory and personnel in one location, the second floor of the Levy Building at 240 S. 40th Street. Both of us are members of a common graduate group, of Cell and Molecular Biology.

Our research goal is to understand the mechanism by which two enveloped DNA viruses, herpes simplex virus (HSV) and Vaccinia Virus (VV) get into cells and set up shop. Certainly, host cells are not inclined to invite these unfriendly creatures in so the viruses have devised molecules on their surfaces that interact with host cell molecules to get the virus into the cell. Our philosophy has been that to understand what turns out to be a rather complex mechanism, one has to have a detailed knowledge of these viral proteins and their cellular targets. For the viral proteins, we have always been trying to find answers to two questions: What do they look like and what do they do? To get at these questions, we have taken a variety of approaches, both structural and functional, that rely on making suitable reagents (proteins, antibodies, mutants) and taking advantage of the latest technology to get answers.

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Last Updated: May 25, 2007