Cheolho Sim, PhD
Professor
Education
- PhD Biological Science, Notre Dame - 2006
- M.S. IBID, Korea University - 2000
- B.S. Biology (Entomology concentration), Korea University - 1998
Area of research
Vector Biology of Human Pathogens
Courses Taught
- BIO 4354 Neglected Tropical Diseases
- BIO 5201 Research Methods in Biology
Research Interests
The two broad areas of work in our laboratory are (1) functional genomics studies of arthropod vectors of human pathogens and (2) diapause research on West Nile Virus vector, especially the mosquito Culex pipiens, which is the primary vector for West Nile encephalitis, Eastern equine encephalitis, and many arboviruses, as well as lymphatic filariases. In particular, filarial nematodes have been infected over 120 million, over 40 million of them are seriously disfigured by the disease. One-third of the people infected with the disease live in India, one third are in Africa and most of the remainder is in South Asia, the Pacific and the Americas.
One of conspicuous void in our understanding of vector biology is how mosquitoes and other disease vectors regulate their seasonal development. Within the temperate zones, mosquitoes limited temporally to just a few months of active development. The remaining months are spent in a dormancy period known as diapause. Thus we are interested in determining the molecular mechanisms by which gene products exert this alternative developmental pathway. An applied aspect of this work is the potential utilization of this phenotype to discover novel developmental and metabolic inhibitors of arthropod vectors of human pathogens.
Publications:
Kim, M., Sim, C., Denlinger, DL. 2010. RNA interference directed against ribosomal protein S3a suggesta a link between this gene and arrested ovarian development during adult diapause in Culex pipiens. Insect Molecular Biology, 19(1): 27-33.
Sim, C., Denlinger, DL.2009. Transcription profiling and regulation of fat metabolism genes in diapausing adults of West Nile Vector, Culex pipiens. Physiological Genomics, 39: 202-209.
Sim, C. and Denlinger, DL. 2009. A shut-down in expression of an insulin-like peptide, ILP-1, halts ovarian maturation during the overwintering diapause of the mosquito Culex pipiens. Insect Molecular Biology, 18: 325-32.
Sim, C. and Denlinger, DL. 2008. Insulin signaling nad FOXO regulate the overwintering diapause of the mosquito Culex pipiens. Proc Natl Acad Sci U.S.A., 105: 6777-6781.
Kang, S., Sim, C., Byrd, B., Collins, FH., and Hong, YS. 2008. Ex vivo promoter analysis of antiviral heat shock cognate 70B gene in Anopheles gambiae. Virology Journal, 5: 136.
Sim, C., Hong, YS., Tsetsarkin KA., Vanlandingham DL., Higgs ., Collins FH. 2007. Anopheles gambiae heat shock protein cognate 70B impedes o'nyong-nyong virus replication. BMC Genomics, 8:231.