Kamal Nahas is a PhD student in the Department of Pathology at the University of Cambridge and on Beamline B24 of the Biological Cryo-Imaging Group at the Diamond Light Source in Oxfordshire. He received his undergraduate with honours in Biology from Imperial College London and a Master of Science in Integrated Immunology at the University of Oxford.
His work focuses on the assembly of the enveloped virus, herpes simplex virus-1 (HSV-1). He is studying how HSV-1 remodels cellular compartments during infection and the roles of different viral proteins during HSV-1 assembly. As a member of Dr Colin Crump's Lab and Dr Stephen Graham's Lab at the University of Cambridge, he is characterising HSV-1 genes involved in envelopment. The majority of his work involves correlative microscopy, for which he is being trained by Dr Maria Harkiolaki at the Diamond Light Source. The correlative imaging combines two techniques - structured illumination microscopy and soft-X-ray tomography - allowing HSV-1 assembly intermediates to be identified using fluorescent markers. This research strategy is being used to visualise HSV-1 infection under cryogenic conditions that preserve cellular ultrastructure in a near-native state.
