Dr. Ward received his PhD in 1985 under the direction of Victor Vacquier at the University of California, San Diego, and did postdoctoral work with Marc Kirschner at the University of California, San Francisco. He was a Senior Staff Fellow at the NIH from 1989 - 1996, when he joined the faculty in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at the University of Vermont.

Research Interests

My laboratory studies the protozoan parasite Toxoplasma gondii, which causes severe congenital disease in newborn infants and life-threatening disease in immunocompromised persons. Toxoplasma is an obligate intracellular parasite and the pathology of toxoplasmosis is due to repeated cycles of host cell invasion, parasite multiplication and host cell lysis. Elucidation of the mechanisms of host cell invasion by T. gondii will therefore be important to an understanding of toxoplasmosis, and to the development of new - and urgently needed - approaches to its diagnosis and treatment. At the same time, the complex interaction that takes place between the parasite and the host cell during invasion provides unique opportunities to study questions of fundamental cell biological interest. Our research is directed towards identifying Toxoplasma proteins that play a role in host cell invasion and determining their specific functions. Two major emphases are the identification and characterization of transmembrane surface proteins of the parasite, and the identification of small molecule inhibitors of invasion (see http://www.uvm.edu/microbiology/research_ward.htm?id=23 for further details).

Invasion of a human fibroblast (right) by a Toxoplasma tachyzoite (left)

Selected Publications

Kato, N., Sakata, T., Breton, G., Le Roch, K. G., Nagle, A., Andersen, C., Bursulaya, B., Henson, K., Johnson, J., Kumar, K. A., Marr, F., Mason, D., McNamara, C., Plouffe, D., Ramachandran, V., Spooner, M., Tuntland, T., Zhou, Y., Peters, E. C., Chatterjee, A., Schultz, P. G., Ward, G. E., Gray, N., Harper, J. and Winzeler, E.A. Gene expression signatures and small-molecule compounds link a protein kinase to Plasmodium falciparum motility. Nat Chem Biol. 2008 Jun;4(6):347-356.

Mital, J. and Ward, G.E. Current and Emerging Approaches to Studying Invasion in Apicomplexan Parasites. 2007. In: Molecular Mechanisms of Parasite Invasion, Dominique Soldati and Barbara Burleigh-eds. Landes Bioscience.

Gilk, S.D., Raviv, Y., Hu, K., Murray, J.M., Beckers, C.J. and Ward GE. Identification of PhIL1, a novel cytoskeletal protein of the Toxoplasma gondii pellicle, through photosensitized labeling with 5-[125I]iodonaphthalene-1-azide. Eukaryot Cell. 2006 Oct;5(10):1622-1634.

Mital, J., Meissner, M., Soldati, D. and Ward, G.E. Conditional expression of Toxoplasma gondii apical membrane antigen-1 (TgAMA1) demonstrates that TgAMA1 plays a critical role in host cell invasion. Mol Biol Cell. 2005 Sep;16(9):4341-4349

Alexander D.L., Mital J., Ward G.E., Bradley P. and Boothroyd J.C. Identification of the moving junction complex of Toxoplasma gondii: a collaboration between distinct secretory organelles. PLoS Pathog. 2005 Oct;1(2):e17. Epub 2005 Oct 21.

Gaskins, E., Gilk, S.G., DeVore, N., Mann, T., Ward. G.E. and Beckers, C.J. Identification of the membrane anchor of a class XIV myosin in Toxoplasma gondii. J Cell Biol. 2004 May 10;165(3):383-393.

Carey, K.L., Westwood, N.J., Mitchison, T.J. and Ward, G.E. A small molecule approach to studying invasive mechanisms of Toxoplasma gondii. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2004 May 11;101(19):7433-7438.