The laboratory has a truly outstanding scientific staff with the technical expertise necessary to maintain a state-of-the-art molecular virology facility dedicated to the study of viral diseases of the horse. Two primary objectives are:

	Maintain the diagnostic capability and expertise of the laboratory through strategic partnering with pre-eminent groups throughout the United States and the world. These collaborations have rapidly expanded the laboratory’s capability so that the scientific staff have become facile in characterizing endemic diseases such as equine herpes, West Nile and equine viral arteritis, and diseases that currently are exotic to the United States such as African horse sickness.
	Continue cutting edge research on viral diseases of the horse that is important to the regional industry, diseases such as equine viral arteritis. These studies are especially focused on the development of new diagnostic and vaccine technologies, definition of the epidemiology and pathogenesis of important viral diseases of the horse, and the recognition of new and emerging viral diseases of the horse. These studies incorporate state-of-the-art research technologies.

Our laboratory has research expertise in the following areas:

Classical virologic techniques and procedures
	Virus isolation
	Serology, including serum neutralization, ELISA, western immunoblotting
Molecular virologic and diagnostic techniques
	Polymerase chain reaction (PCR)
		Reverse transcriptase PCR (RT-PCR)
		Nested PCR
		Real-time PCR
	Southern and northern blotting
	Nucleic acid sequencing
	Genome manipulation procedures such as infectious cDNA clones
	Modern strategies for nonreplicating vaccine development
		Subunit vaccines
		DNA vaccines
		Novel “targeted” vaccine delivery systems
	Production and characterization of monoclonal antibodies
Epidemiology and molecular epidemiology
	Genetic characterization of microbial evolution
	Genetic determinants of virus persistence and virulence
Pathology and pathogenesis
	Necropsy and histopathology
	Immunohistochemistry
	In situ hybridization
	Electron microscopy
	Flow cytometry
	Microarry