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The assistance of Dr. Ellen and James Strauss at Caltech, experts on the Mammalian virus Sindbis, which Dr. Gelbart believed to be a basis model for enveloped viruses, helped train Ph.D. candidate Odisse Azizgolshani to bring this research back to UCLA. Odisse worked on the self assembly of Sindbis from its purified components. Although these early experiments were unsuccessful, after the establishment of a fully equipped and with the appropriate biochemical safety clearance, Gelbart’s research began to focus on RNA instead of DNA viruses.

The physical chemistry basis of this new biological research remained very much alive. With collaborator Avi Ben Shaul, Gelbart studied the polymeric properties of single stranded RNA and how they could be seen as” statistical objects.” Ph.D. students Aron Yoffe, Li Tai Fang, and Walter Singaram worked on modeling how different sequencing of viral RNA affected the packing, the effect of scaling size and molecular weight, and the effect of RNA branching and its binding to capsids. These projects gave way to a multitude of experiments utilizing small-angle synchrotron X-ray, fluorescence correlation spectroscopy, and cryo-electron microscopy again comparing viral and non-viral DNA sizes. These studies led to the synthesis of “replicons”, which are molecules that contain genes that code for the enzyme that makes them as well as genes for a protein with which one wishes to selectively populate a separate system. Recent studies are investigating animal scale studies.

Dr. Gelbart’s career has traversed and unified many disciplines, breaking down the conventional idea of having an area of expertise. His outlook and ideology resonates with many students and his work has been recognized with many awards and reognitions. He continues to impact students on a daily basis in the classroom, the laboratory, and his office, a space combining aspects of home, art studio, and classroom into one.