Center Information

The Pittsburgh Center for HIV Protein Interactions (PCHPI) is funded under an NIH initiative to understand the structures of HIV proteins and nucleic acids as they engage human cellular components. The center was established through a grant (P50GM082251) from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), both of the National Institutes of Health. The center is now fully funded by a grant from the NIAID (originally through P50AI150481 and now by U54AI170791).

The PCHPI members investigate several areas of HIV biology including the proteins involved in maturation, entry, intracellular trafficking, restriction, nuclear import, and integration. The PCHPI derives spatial atomic and cellular level structures of these proteins using several structural methods (X-ray crystallography, solution NMR spectroscopy, solid-state NMR spectroscopy,  cryo-Electron Microscopy and computational simulations) and, with state-of-the-art imaging methodologies, follows the temporal sequence of events that occur after virus-cell fusion and before HIV genome integration.