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Dr. Horne

Kate McElroy Horne, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Department of Pathology

University of Texas Medical Branch
301 University Boulevard
5.200-17 GNL / 2.104 Keiller
Galveston, TX 77555-0609

Office: (409) 266-6781
Lab: (409) 772-2511
Fax: (409) 747-2437
kmhorne@utmb.edu

Professional Education

Degree Institution Field of Study Graduation Year
B.A. University of Texas, Austin, Texas Microbiology 2001
Ph.D. UTMB, Galveston, Texas Experimental Pathology 2006
ORISE Ph.D. CDC DVBID Dengue Branch, San Juan, Puerto Rico   2009

Honors

2006 Dean’s Award for Academic Excellence
2005 ASTMH Young Investigator Award (Honorable Mention)
2004 Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society
2004 SCVD Award for Student Poster Presentation
2004 Who’s Who in American Colleges and Universities
2003 Pathology Dept. Award for Molecular/Cell Biology Research (Honorable Mention)
2001 Basic Biomedical Science Curriculum Scholarship

Professional Affiliations

  • American Association of University Women, 2008
  • American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, 2003
  • American Committee on Arthropod-borne Viruses, 2003
  • American Committee of Medical Entomology, 2003
  • Entomological Society of America, 2005

Research Interests

I am interested in flavivirus evolution and the molecular and biological aspects of mosquito-virus interactions. As members of the Genomic Resources in Dengue Consortium, we gained considerable insight into the forces driving evolution of all 4 serotypes of dengue virus on the island of Puerto Rico and the surrounding Caribbean basin during my post-doctoral fellowship at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Dengue Branch in San Juan, Puerto Rico. I am currently attempting to translate these insights into improved diagnostic and surveillance tools, and future work will focus on defining the impact of numerous genetic differences observed between introduced versus indigenous strains of dengue virus in Puerto Rico on mosquito transmission and therefore virus resurgence and serotype displacement on the island. I am also interested in tracking arbovirus co-circulation and its potential impact on disease epidemiology in affected areas. Specifically, I plan to investigate the impact of mosquito-specific differences in vectorial capacity, virus-specific differences in pathogenesis, and potential resistance to superinfection on virus transmission in areas at risk for co-circulation/introduction of different flaviviruses and/or alphaviruses with shared mosquito vectors.

Selected Publications

  1. Kate L. McElroy, Niall J. Lennon, Gilberto A. Santiago, Bruce W. Birren, Matthew R. Henn, and Jorge L. Muñoz-Jordán.  Long-term Dominance of Dengue Virus Type 2 Throughout Major Epidemiological Changes in Puerto Rico. In preparation.
  2. Kate L. McElroy, Niall J. Lennon, Gilberto A. Santiago, Bruce W. Birren, Matthew R. Henn, and Jorge L. Muñoz-Jordán. Reintroduction and Expansion of Dengue Virus Serotype 3 in Puerto Rico, 1998-2007. In preparation.
  3. Kate L. McElroy, Niall J. Lennon, Gilberto A. Santiago, Bruce W. Birren, Matthew R. Henn, and Jorge L. Muñoz-Jordán. Lineage replacement events and microevolution of dengue viruses types 1-4 in the Caribbean basin. In preparation.
  4. Kate L. McElroy, Kovi Bessoff, Edgardo Vergne, Candimar Colon, Manuel Amador, Roberto Barrera, Elizabeth Hunsperger, and Jorge Muñoz-Jordán. Sequence analysis and infectivity for field-collected Culex quinquefasciatus mosquitoes of the first West Nile virus isolates from Puerto Rico. In preparation.
  5. Elizabeth Hunsperger, Kate L. McElroy, Kovi Bessoff, Edgardo Vergne, Roberto Barrera, and Jorge Muñoz-Jordán (2008). Isolation and Analysis of West Nile virus from blood donors, vertebrate animals and mosquitoes in Puerto Rico, 2007. Emerging Infectious Diseases 15, 1298-1300.
  6. Kate L. McElroy, Yvette A. Girard, Charles E. McGee, Konstantin A. Tsetsarkin, Dana L. Vanlandingham, and Stephen Higgs (2008). Characterization of the antigen distribution and tissue tropisms of three phenotypically distinct yellow fever virus variants in orally infected Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. Vector Borne Zoonotic Diseases 8, 675-687.
  7. Nobutaka Kato, Christopher R. Meiller, Jeremy F. Fuchs, Kate McElroy, Vilena Wessely, Stephen Higgs, and Bruce M. Christensen (2008). Evaluation of the function of the type I peritropic matrix as a physical barrier for midgut epithelium invasion by mosquito-borne pathogens in Aedes aegypti. Vector Borne Zoonotic Diseases 8, 701-712.
  8. Charles E. McGee, Konstantin Tsetsarkin, Dana L. Vanlandingham, Kate L. McElroy, Jean Lang, Bruno Guy, Thierry Decelle, and Stephen Higgs (2008). Substitution of wild-type yellow fever Asibi sequences for 17D vaccine sequences in ChimeriVaxTM-Dengue 4 does not enhance infection of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. Journal of Infectious Diseases 197, 686-692.
  9. Kate L. McElroy, Konstantin A. Tsetsarkin, Dana L. Vanlandingham, and Stephen Higgs (2006). Manipulation of the yellow fever virus non-structural proteins 2A and 4B and the 3’ non-coding region to evaluate viral dissemination from the Aedes aegypti midgut. American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 75, 1158-1164.
  10. Stephen Higgs, Dana L. Vanlandingham, Kimberly A. Klingler, Kate L. McElroy, Charles E. McGee, Laura Harrington, Thomas P. Monath, and Farshad Guirakhoo (2006). Growth characteristics of ChimerivaxTM-Den vaccine viruses in Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus from Thailand. American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 75, 986-993.
  11. Kate L. McElroy, Konstantin A. Tsetsarkin, Dana L. Vanlandingham, and Stephen Higgs (2006) Role of the yellow fever virus structural protein genes in viral dissemination from the Aedes aegypti mosquito midgut. Journal of General Virology 87, 2993-3001.
  12. Dana L. Vanlandingham, Konstantin Tsetsarkin, Kimberly Klingler, Chao Hong, Kate L. McElroy, Michael J. Lehane, and Stephen Higgs (2006) Determinants of vector specificity of o’nyong-nyong and chikungunya virus isolates in Anopheles and Aedes mosquitoes. American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 74, 663-669.
  13. Dana L. Vanlandingham, Konstantin Tsetsarkin, Chao Hong, Kimberly Klingler, Kate L. McElroy, Michael J. Lehane, and Stephen Higgs (2005) Development and characterization of a double-subgenomic chikungunya virus infectious clone to express heterologous genes in Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. Insect Biochemistry and Molecular Biology 35, 1162-1170.
  14. Kate L. McElroy, Konstantin A. Tsetsarkin, Dana L. Vanlandingham, and Stephen Higgs (2005) Characterization of an infectious clone of the wild-type yellow fever virus Asibi strain that is able to infect and disseminate in mosquitoes. Journal of General Virology 86, 1747-1751.
  15. Dana L. Vanlandingham, Choa Hong, Kimberly Klingler, Konstantin Tsetsarkin, Kate L. McElroy, Ann M. Powers, Michael J. Lehane, and Stephen Higgs (2005) Differential infectivities of o’nyong-nyong and chikungunya virus isolates in Anopheles gambiae and Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 72, 616-621.

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