The KT Jeang Retrovirology prize 2022: Florence Margottin-Goguet.

In this mechanism, a viral protein bridges a host ubiquitin ligase to a specific host protein which is not its natural substrate. Thumbing through different papers in the nearby laboratory library, Florence discovered that human TrCP shared a sequence motif with ubiquitin ligases subunits involved in the targeting of proteins to the ubiquitin-mediated proteolysis pathway [[5]]. The hijacking of ubiquitin ligase by HIV auxiliary proteins then became the favorite theme of Florence's research. Therefore, Florence and Catherine raised the hypothesis that during their evolution, Vpr and Vpx conserved the use of the DCAF1 ubiquitin ligase but diverged as for the selection of host proteins targeted for degradation, which in turn ensured distinct biological activities. [Extracted from the article]