Karla Kirkegaard
Karla Kirkegaard earned her B.S.
from Berkeley in 1976, with a major in Genetics, and her Ph.D. from Harvard in
1983 for her work on the mechanisms of DNA topoisomerases with James C. Wang.
For her postdoctoral work, she studied RNA virus replication with David
Baltimore at M.I.T. and the Whitehead Institute. Her postdoctoral research
showed that RNA recombination among poliovirus genomes occurs by a copy-choice
mechanism, as opposed to the breaking-and-rejoining mechanisms common among DNA
genomes.
After joining the faculty of the University of Colorado in Boulder in 1986, she and her laboratory continued to explore the genetics, biochemistry and, eventually, the cell biology of RNA viral propagation. She received several awards, including the Searle Scholar's Award, a David and Lucile Packard Fellowship, an American Cancer Society Junior Faculty Award, and appointment to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. In 1996, Kirkegaard and her laboratory moved to the Stanford University School of Medicine, where she is currently Associate Professor of Microbiology and Immunology. The laboratory's recent work has emphasized studies of the mechanism of the poliovirus RNA-dependent RNA polymerase and its cooperative interaction with template RNAs, as well as the inhibition of protein secretion and evasion of the cellular immune response by nonenveloped RNA viruses.
Send email to Karla at karlak@leland.stanford.edu