Rate My Professor Jared May

Jared May is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Biological and Biomedical Systems in the School of Science and Engineering at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, joining the faculty in 2020. He earned a B.S. in Biology from Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania in 2010 and a Ph.D. in Microbiology from Georgetown University in 2015, during which he studied human noroviruses responsible for outbreaks. He then completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics at the University of Maryland, College Park, from 2015 to 2019. May's research centers on the interactions between RNA viruses and host cells, focusing on how viruses evade nonsense-mediated decay (NMD), a key RNA degradation pathway. His laboratory employs model plant viruses, such as Pea enation mosaic virus 2, to dissect viral strategies that protect RNAs from NMD. Key findings include the multifunctional movement protein p26, which inhibits NMD, disrupts cellular RNA metabolism, and undergoes phase separation with host proteins fibrillarin and G3BP1 to enhance viral fitness and intercellular movement. These studies explore biomolecular condensates and their broader implications for viral pathogenesis and neurodegenerative diseases.

May has published extensively on virus-host dynamics in leading journals. Selected publications include "Phase Separation of a Plant Virus Movement Protein and Cellular Factors Support Virus-Host Interactions" (PLoS Pathogens, 2021, with S.L. Brown and D.J. Garrison), "The Multifunctional Long-Distance Movement Protein of Pea Enation Mosaic Virus 2 Protects Viral and Host Transcripts from Nonsense-Mediated Decay" (mBio, 2020), "RNA Virus Evasion of Nonsense-Mediated Decay" (PLoS Pathogens, 2018), "RNase III Nucleases from Diverse Kingdoms Serve as Antiviral Effectors" (Nature, 2017), and "Targeting of Viral RNAs by Upf1-Mediated RNA Decay Pathways" (Current Opinion in Virology, 2021). His contributions have earned the 2024 Early Career Faculty Award from the UMKC Emeritus College, supporting attendance at the American Society for Virology annual meeting, along with NIH funding: the R35 Maximizing Investigators' Research Award (MIRA) from NIGMS and an R15 award, totaling over $2 million.