Biography

I am broadly interested in how RNA viruses employ structured regions of their RNA genome to regulate aspects of their replication cycle, including the manipulation of host cell machinery. My PhD (Puglisi Labs, Stanford) and postdoctoral training (Hurley Lab, UC Berkeley) focused on using cryo-electron microscopy and biochemistry to structurally characterize how HIV-1 co-opts host proteins and RNAs during replication. I aim to bring my expertise to the Kieft lab and continue mechanistically dissecting how viral RNAs interact with host and viral proteins. My current work mostly focuses on biochemistry and cryo-EM, but I am always looking for complementary methods to answer the specific problem at hand. Outside the lab, I enjoy long walks in the city, museums, watching movies, and spoiling my cats, Nacho and Bean.

Publications

A structural bridge between dengue virus tandem xrRNAs facilitates coordination of exonuclease resistance

Elizabeth Spear, Zoe O'Donoghue, Steve L. Bonilla, Kevin P. Larsen, Madeline E. Sherlock, Jeffrey S. Kieft

mBio, Vol. 17, Issue 9

2026 September

Assembly and priming of the VPS4B AAA+ ATPase of the human ESCRT system

James Hurley, Yuchao Zhang, Shuixia Tan, Kevin Larsen, Sumin Kim, Lilah Byun, Isabella Alfonso

2026 July

SigmaR1 shapes rough endoplasmic reticulum membrane sheets

Eric M. Sawyer, Liv E. Jensen, Janet B. Meehl, Kevin P. Larsen, Daniel A. Petito, James H. Hurley, Gia K. Voeltz

Developmental Cell, Vol. 59, Issue 19, Pages 2566-2577.e7

2024 October

Mechanism and cellular function of direct membrane binding by the ESCRT and ERES-associated Ca 2+ -sensor ALG-2

Sankalp Shukla, Wei Chen, Shanlin Rao, Serim Yang, Chenxi Ou, Kevin P. Larsen, Gerhard Hummer, Phyllis I. Hanson, James H. Hurley

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 121, Issue 9

2024 February

Pressure pushes tRNA Lys3 into excited conformational states

Jinqiu Wang, Tejaswi Koduru, Balasubramanian Harish, Scott A. McCallum, Kevin P. Larsen, Karishma S. Patel, Edgar V. Peters, Richard E. Gillilan, Elisabetta V. Puglisi, Joseph D. Puglisi, George Makhatadze, Catherine A. Royer

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 120, Issue 26

2023 June

In vitro reconstitution of calcium-dependent recruitment of the human ESCRT machinery in lysosomal membrane repair

Sankalp Shukla, Kevin P. Larsen, Chenxi Ou, Kevin Rose, James H. Hurley

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 119, Issue 35

2022 August

Friction-driven membrane scission by the human ESCRT-III proteins CHMP1B and IST1

A. King Cada, Mark R. Pavlin, Juan P. Castillo, Alexander B. Tong, Kevin P. Larsen, Xuefeng Ren, Adam L. Yokom, Feng-Ching Tsai, Jamie V. Shiah, Patricia M. Bassereau, Carlos J. Bustamante, James H. Hurley

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 119, Issue 29

2022 July

High-resolution view of HIV-1 reverse transcriptase initiation complexes and inhibition by NNRTI drugs

Betty Ha, Kevin P. Larsen, Jingji Zhang, Ziao Fu, Elizabeth Montabana, Lynnette N. Jackson, Dong-Hua Chen, Elisabetta Viani Puglisi

Nature Communications, Vol. 12, Issue 1

2021 May

Distinct Conformational States Underlie Pausing during Initiation of HIV-1 Reverse Transcription

Kevin P. Larsen, Junhong Choi, Lynnette N. Jackson, Kalli Kappel, Jingji Zhang, Betty Ha, Dong-Hua Chen, Elisabetta Viani Puglisi

Journal of Molecular Biology, Vol. 432, Issue 16, Pages 4499-4522

2020 June

Relating Structure and Dynamics in RNA Biology.

Kevin P. Larsen, Junhong Choi, Arjun Prabhakar, Elisabetta Viani Puglisi, Joseph D. Puglisi

Cold Spring Harbor perspectives in biology, Vol. 11, Issue 7, Pages a032474

2019 July

De novo computational RNA modeling into cryo-EM maps of large ribonucleoprotein complexes

Kalli Kappel, Shiheng Liu, Kevin P. Larsen, Georgios Skiniotis, Elisabetta Viani Puglisi, Joseph D. Puglisi, Z. Hong Zhou, Rui Zhao, Rhiju Das

Nature Methods, Vol. 15, Issue 11, Pages 947-954

2018 November

Dynamic Interplay of RNA and Protein in the Human Immunodeficiency Virus-1 Reverse Transcription Initiation Complex

Aaron T. Coey, Kevin P. Larsen, Junhong Choi, Daniel J. Barrero, Joseph D. Puglisi, Elisabetta Viani Puglisi

Journal of Molecular Biology, Vol. 430, Issue 24, Pages 5137-5150

2018 September

Architecture of an HIV-1 reverse transcriptase initiation complex

Kevin P. Larsen, Yamuna Kalyani Mathiharan, Kalli Kappel, Aaron T. Coey, Dong-Hua Chen, Daniel Barrero, Lauren Madigan, Joseph D. Puglisi, Georgios Skiniotis, Elisabetta Viani Puglisi

Nature, Vol. 557, Issue 7703, Pages 118-122

2018 April

Heterogeneous structures formed by conserved RNA sequences within the HIV reverse transcription initiation site

Aaron Coey, Kevin Larsen, Joseph D. Puglisi, Elisabetta Viani Puglisi

RNA, Vol. 22, Issue 11, Pages 1689-1698

2016 September