Maria Tokuyama unravels connections among viruses, disease and DNA

Dr. Maria Tokuyama lights up when she talks about her work. “One thing that I really like about science is that there's always more to be learned,” she says. “You never get bored of it.”

As an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia, Tokuyama studies the complicated interactions between viruses and the immune system.

When some types of viruses, such as HIV, infect a host cell, they have the amazing ability to insert a slice of their own genetic material into the hosts’ DNA. These snippets of viral DNA are then replicated and passed through generations.

With this process happening over millennia, scientists estimate that humans have accumulated up to 8% of our genome from these viral insertions—four times more than DNA that codes for protein.

This chunk of DNA that comes from viruses is called the human virome, and Tokuyama is dedicated to understanding how viruses affect the immune system and immunological diseases.

By gaining a better understanding of the complicated interactions, Tokuyama hopes to develop therapies for autoimmune diseases such as lupus or multiple sclerosis.

Tokuyama notes that, at times, an academic system based so centrally on publishing new research can be discouraging.

“There's no external recognition of some of the smaller successes, so it sets people up to feel like you're continually failing,” she says.

Furthermore, inequality is still pervasive in academia.

According to a 2018 report from the Canadian Association of University Teachers, racialized individuals make up less than 15% of all higher level education instructors, a drop from the number of racialized students at 36%. On top of that, racialized women instructors earn $77k on average compared to white men who earn $114k.

She acknowledges that the scientific field can still feel exclusionary, like when she experiences a lack of recognition or support or is the only person of her demographic in a room.

“It's all these subtle things that kind of accumulate over time,” she says.

A Passion for Pathogens

Tokuyama was born in Japan and raised and educated in the United States. In high school, she developed a fascination for viruses, reading about different outbreaks that have plagued humanity over the centuries.

At an undergraduate level, she sought work in an HIV lab where she developed an appetite for lab work and the joys of scientific discovery.

“I was privy to weekly coffee chats where senior scientists would throw out different hypothesis and discuss the pros and cons,” says Tokuyama. “That was a really cool process to see…And then I got to observe everyone's excitement when new discoveries were made.”

Tokuyama worked in a lab developing an Ebola vaccine at the National Institutes of Health before pursuing a PhD at the University of California, Berkley, and then later became a postdoc at Yale University. She joined the University of British Columbia as an assistant professor two years ago.

Now, with many new trainees “the joys of mentoring and teaching have exponentially grown,” she says.

Tokuyama’s lab uses a variety of techniques to tease apart how endogenous retroviruses (ERVs), or viruses that have implanted themselves in the human genome, influence the immune system.

Our immune system affects how we each respond to diseases, she explains, and ERVs can influence our susceptibility to autoimmune diseases and some cancers.

“How much of our immune system function is dictated by the viral sequences that still remain in our DNA?” she asks.

Tokuyama researches many different aspects of how ERVs affect our health, but she is especially proud of her work in understanding inflammation in lupus—a chronic illness in which the body’s immune system attacks its own cells.

“If ERVs are contributing to worsening of inflammation, then we can design novel therapeutics to block that and potentially help in these chronic diseases,” she explains.

In addition of spreading the delights of discovery to her students, it’s a priority for Tokuyama to have diverse representation and to foster an inclusive environment.

She is part of the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) committee of her department, overseeing diversity statements and hiring practices. In the lab, she also has an EDI Journal Club, where her students review papers that discuss topics such as racism or decolonization in science.

“Why should people feel [excluded] when they just want to do science?” she asks.  

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Celebrate Asian Heritage Month!

From building airplanes in Chinatown, to conserving wild salmon in the Pacific, to breaking boundaries in Punjabi drag culture, to exploring the human virome, these experts are making history in STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art & design, and math).