Consulting

2002- , Teledyne-ISCO, Incorporated, Lincoln, NE

1996 - 1998, Hampshire Chemical Corporation, Lexington, MA

1994 - 1995, Life Technologies, Incorporated, Gaithersburg, M

Professional Organizations:

American Society for Virology (Co-Chair of the Education Committee, 1992 - 1996)

American Society for Microbiology

Nebraska Center for Virology

Sigma Xi

AAAS

Courses Taught

Undergraduate - Virology, Biology of AIDS, Cell Biology, Cell Biology Laboratory, Seminar in Microbiology

Graduate - Readings in Virology, Advanced Virology, Virus Replication Mechanisms, Transcriptional Control

Professional Positions

2008-
Research Associate Professor, Plant Pathology
University of Nebraska-Lincoln

2000-2008
Research Assistant Professor, Plant Pathology
University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE

1996 - 2000
Visiting Assistant, Institute for Food and Agricultural Sciences
University of Florida, Lake Alfred and Dover, FL

1989 - 1996
Assistant Professor, Department of Biological Sciences
University of South Florida, Tampa, FL

1985 - 1989
Postdoctoral Associate/Research Associate (Preceptor Milton Zaitlin, Ph. D.), Postdoctoral Fellow of the Cornell Biotechnology Program - Department of Plant Pathology,
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY

1980 - 1985
Research Assistant II (Preceptor Jean M. Lucas-Lenard, Ph. D.), Section of Biochemistry and Biophysics-Department of Biological Sciences
University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT

1978 - 1980
Research Assistant I (Preceptor James R. Knox, Ph. D.), Section of Biochemistry and Biophysics-Department of Biological Sciences
University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT

Recent Invited Lectures

“Mitochondrial DNA”, Nebraska Wesleyan University, Lincoln, Nebraska, March 2010

“The Giant Viruses: Why So Many Genes?”, Nebraska Wesleyan University, Lincoln, Nebraska, March 2010

“Exploring Giant Viral Genomes: Why So Many Genes?”, The James Hutton Institute, Dundee, Scotland, United Kingdom, October 2011

“Chloroviruses in North America”, U. S. Geological Survey/Nebraska Water Science Center, Lincoln, Nebraska, January 2012

“Giant algal viruses: Why so many genes?”, University of Maryland-College Park, May, 2009

“The potential of algal biofuels”, Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality, Lincoln, Nebraska, June, 2009

2007
“The life and times of giant viruses”, Nebraska Wesleyan University, Lincoln, Nebraska

“Early events in chlorovirus infections”, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

2006
“In search of the unknowns: Gene discovery using evolutionary genomics”, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

2005
“Immediate-early events in chlorella virus infections”, John Innes Centre, Norwich, United Kingdom

“Host-virus interactions and the consequences of infection”, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Selected Recent Publications

Van Etten, J.L. and Dunigan, D.D. (2012). Chloroviruses: not your everyday plant virus. Trends in Plant Science 17: 1-8

Wulfmeyer, T., Polzer, C., Hiepler, G., Hamacher, K., Shoeman, R., Dunigan, D., Van Etten, JL, Lolicato, M., Moroni, A., Thiel, G., Meckel, T. (2012). Structural organization of DNA in Chlorella viruses. PLoS One 7(2):e30133. Epub 2012 Feb 16.

 Blanc G, Agarkova I, Brueggeman A, Dunigan DD, Gurnon J, Kuo A, Ladunga I, Lindquist E, Lucas S, Pangilinan J, Pröschold T, Salamov A, Weeks D, Grigoriev IV, Yamada T, Claverie J-M, Van Etten JL. (2012). The genome of the polar green microalga Coccomyxa subellipsoidea C-169 reveals eukaryotic strategies of Cold Adaptation. Genome Biology, 13:R39 doi:10.1186/gb-2012-13-5-r39

David D. Dunigan, Ronald L. Cerny, Andrew T. Bauman, Jared C. Roach, Leslie C. Lane,  Irina V. Agarkova, Kurt Wulser, Giane M. Yanai-Balser, James R. Gurnon, Jason C.Vitek, Bernard J. Kronschnabel, Adrien Jeannard, Guillaume Blanc, Chris Upton, Garry A. Duncan, O. William McClung, Fangrui Ma, James L. Van Etten (2012). Paramecium bursaria Chlorella Virus 1 Proteome Reveals Novel Architectural and Regulatory Features of a Giant Virus. Journal of Virology 86: 8821-8834 (See the issue Spotlight, and the journal cover of the vol. 86, no. 17 issue)

Zhang, X., Xiang, Y., Dunigan, D. D., Klose, T., Van Etten J. L., Rossmann, M. G. (2011). The structure and function of the Paramecium bursaria chlorella virus capsid. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) 108: 14837-14842

Blanc G., Duncan G., Agarkova I., Borodovsky M., Gurnon J., Kuo A., Lindquist E., Lucas S., Pangilinan J., Polle J., Salamov A., Terry A., Yamada T., Dunigan D.D., Grigoriev I. V., Claverie J-M., and Van Etten J. L. (2010) Chlorella sp. NC64A genome reveals adaptation to photosymbiosis, coevolution with viruses and cryptic sex. Plant Cell 22: 2943-2955

Van Etten, J. L., Gurnon, J., Yanai-Balser, G., Dunigan, D., Graves, M. V. (2010). Chlorella viruses encode most, if not all, of the machinery to glycosylate their glycoproteins independent of the endoplasmic reticulum. Biochemica et Biophysica Acta 1800: 152-159

Yanai-Balser, G. M., Duncan, G. A., Eudy, J. D., Wang, D., Agarkova, I. V., Dungian, D. D., Van Etten, J. L., (2010) Microarray analysis of chlorella virus PBCV-1 transcription. Journal of Virology 84:532-542

Thiel, G., Moroni, A., Dunigan, D., Van Etten, J. (2010) Initial events associated with virus PBCV-1 infection of Chlorella NC64A. Progress in Botany (U. Luttge, W., Beyschlag, Budel, D., eds.) vol. 71. DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-02167-1_7, © Springer-Verlag, Berlin

Van Etten, J. L., Lane, L. C., Dunigan, D. D. (2010) DNA viruses – The really big ones (giruses). Annual Reviews in Microbiology 64:  (in press)

Agarkova, I., Dunigan, D., Gurnon, J., Greiner, T., Barres, J., Thiel, G., Van Etten, J L. (2008) Chlorovirus-mediated membrane depolarization of chlorella alters secondary active transport of solutes. Journal of Virology 82: 12181-12190

Zhang, Y., Maley, F., Maley, G. F., Duncan, G., Dunigan, D. D., Van Etten, J. L. (2007) A bifunctional dCMP-dCTP deaminase encoded by chlorella virus PBCV-1. Journal of Virology 81: 7662-7671

Recent Selected Abstracts:

Annual Meeting of the Stanley Medical Research Institute, held in Baltimore, Maryland, USA, December 2011.  Title (Oral presentation): Chlorovirus safari; Authors: David D. Dunigan, James L. Van Etten.

2012 Flyswat, held in Nebraska City, Nebraska, March 2012. Title (Poster presentation): An evaluation of Nebraska River Systems for chloroviruses; Authors: Claire Mueller, David Dunigan, James Gurnon, James Van Etten.

Algal Biofuels Symposium 2012, held in La Jolla, California; May 2012. Title (Oral presentation): Algal – virus interactions: A proteomic approach to host range specficity; Authors: D. D. Dunigan, J. L. Van Etten.

Plant Virus Ecology Network Workshop 5, held in Lawrence, Kansas, USA, September 2012. Title: A two year comparison of chloroviruses in Nebraska river systems; Author: David D. Dunigan.

Aquatic Virus Workshop 6, held in Texel, The Netherlands, October 2011. Title: The evolving view of chlorovirus structure; Authors: Dunigan, D.D., Duncan, G.A., Lane, L.C., Zhang, X., Rossmann, M., Van Etten, J.L.
Title: An evaluation of Nebraska Streams for Chloroviruses; Authors: Mueller, C.M., Dunigan, D.D., Gurnon, J. R., Van Etten, J.L.

Annual Meeting of The American Society for Virology, held at Minneapolis, Minnesota; July 2011. Title: Crossing kingdoms: association of phycodnaviruses with human psychiatric disorders; Authors: L. Jones-Brando, E. Severance, M. Webster, S.Kim, J. Gurnon, D. D. Dunigan, F. Dickerson, J. L. Van Etten, R. Yolken

Algal Biofuels Symposium 2011, held in La Jolla, California; April 2011. Title: Future crop protection; viruses of eukaryotic algae; Authors: D. D. Dunigan, J. L. Van Etten.

Annual Meeting of The American Society for Virology, held at Bozeman, Montana; July 2010. Title: Chlorovirus major capsid proteins; Authors: D. D. Dunigan, L. C. Lane, G. L. Lewis, G. A. Duncan, G. M. Yanai-Balser, J. C. Vitek, R. L. Cerny, J. L. Van Etten.

3rd Annual Meeting of the SCOR Working Group on the Role of Viruses in Marine Ecosystems, held in Newark, DE, May 2009. Title: “The black holes of virus taxonomy”

D. D. Dunigan, I. V. Agarkova, J. R. Gurnon, G. A. Duncan, M. V. Graves, J. L. Van Etten. Annual Meeting of The American Society for Virology, held at Ithaca, New York; July 2008. Title: "Bridges and bypasses on the road to Chlorovirus replication"

D. D. Dunigan, I. V. Agarkova, J. R. Gurnon, G. A. Duncan, M. V. Graves, J. L. Van Etten. Aquatic Virus Workshop 5, held in Vancouver, British Columbia, July 2008. Title: "The road to Chlorovirus replication with bridges and bypasses"

I Agarkova, D. Dunigan, J. Van Etten. 30th Symposium on Biotechnology for Fuels and Chemicals, held in New Orleans, Louisiana, May 2008. Title: "Chlorella algae and their viruses are a source of xyloglucan hydrolyzing enzymes"

D. Dunigan, Garry A. Duncan, Lisa A. Fitzgerald, Michael V. Graves, James R. Gurnon, James L. Van Etten Second Annual Department of Energy-Joint Genome Institute User Meeting, held in Walnut Creek, CA, April 2007. Title: "Comparative genomics of chloroviruses"

D. Dunigan, G. Duncan, Y. Zhang, and J. Van Etten. Annual Meeting of The American Society for Virology, held at Corvallis, Oregon; July 2007.  Title: “Chloroviruses augment nucleotide metabolism”

D. Dunigan, R. Cerny, L. Lane, L. Fitzgerald, I. Agarkova, B. Kronschnabel, and J. Van Etten. Annual Meeting of The American Society for Virology, held at Madison, Wisconsin; July 2006.  Title: “Comparative proteomic analysis of chloroviruses”

Education

Cornell University, Postdoctoral Fellow, Virology, 1985-1988

University of Connecticut, Ph.D., Biochemistry, 1985

University of Southern Indiana, B.S., Life Science/Chemistry, 1977

Research Interests

Our research is focused on host-virus interactions, especially as it relates to pathogenesis. I have investigated several eukaryotic viral systems, including both plant and animal viruses. In considering virus infections generally, I have searched for common functions and events that tend to unite themes in virology. These have included i) the ability of most viruses to capture components of the cellular metabolic functions, and ii) the consequences of infection.

The present work is in collaboration with Dr. James Van Etten, a "foundingfather" of the family Phycodnaviridae - the algal viruses. The type member of the genus Chlorovirus is Paramecium bursariachlorella virus-1 (PBCV-1). PBCV-1 is well characterized with respect to its large dsDNA genome (330 kb) and ~375 open reading frames. The virion is equally impressive with respect to size (190 nm diameter icosahedral particle, T = 169) and complexity (greater than 100 virus-encoded proteins). Evolutionarily, these viruses are related to other large DNA viruses, such as poxviruses, African swine fever virus, iridoviruses, and Mimivirus; collectively known as nucleocytoplasmic large DNA viruses (NCLDV). Through functional genomics, we are investigating the virion structure, including the proteome, metabolic changes associated with infection, and the role of algal viruses in aquatic ecosystems.