[1] One year later, she received her Master of Science from Florida State in bacteriology and then enrolled in a graduate program in virology at the University of Chicago.
For her doctoral work, Spear joined the laboratory of Bernard Roizman to conduct research on herpes simplex virus (HSV).
"[1] There, she developed a method to purify the herpes simplex enveloped nucleocapsid, known as a virion, and determined the number of proteins it contained using electrophoresis.
[1] During her tenure at the University of Chicago, Spear developed a new area of research studying HSV glycoproteins in the viral envelop.
Her group found that the initial cell-surface receptor for both HSV 1 and HSV2 is heparan sulfate, a carbohydrate component of some proteoglycans that is recognized and bound by the viral glycoproteins gB and gC.