Doodle by Elisa Visher Abstract: Bats are reservoirs for the world's most virulent viral zoonoses, including Ebola and Marburg filoviruses, Hendra and Nipah henipaviruses, and SARS and MERS coronaviruses, pathogens which they host without exhibiting symptoms of clinical disease. Recent molecular advances suggest that the evolution of flight may have promoted the development of anti-inflammatory physiologies allowing bats to effectively mitigate oxidative stress accrued during metabolism--with cascading consequences for longevity and viral tolerance. My research investigates ecological and evolutionary questions in the bat-virus system, exploring the mechanisms enabling bat virus persistence at the population level, as well as the impacts of unique bat immune strategies on the probability of between-host viral transmission and the evolution of within-host viral virulence. I combine field studies focused on longitudinally-monitored fruit bat populations in central Madagascar with in vitro experiments in bat tissue culture and theoretical adaptive dynamics approaches to explore questions related to the persistence, evolution, and cross-species emergence of zoonotic viruses from bat reservoirs into human hosts. Abstract from Cara Brook
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Doodle by Alison Feder Emily Ebel visited the Berkeley EEID seminar from the Petrov Lab at Stanford to present her work on genetic and phenotypic variants that shape malaria fitness in human blood. Tiny worms in rotting apples Bellies filled with a diversity of microbes Acquired from their decaying abodes And passed down from the worms that came before Providing protection from their malignant counterparts Though only to a selected few Warring families compete to stake claim to grooves within How curious are the controls at work that determine this community Poem by Nina Sokolov Using C. elegans to study the role of host genetics in shaping microbiome structure and function The gut microbiome contributes to host health and fitness. Phylogenetic analyses demonstrate the importance of evolutionary processes for shaping host-microbiome interactions. However, identifying host genes shaped by the microbiome, and characterizing their involvement in determining microbiome structure and function has been difficult, in particular in vertebrates, where inter-individual variation masks shared patterns. Work in C. elegans offers the opportunity to work with clonal host populations, reducing noise and highlighting gene signatures, and facilitates genetic manipulation to identify relevant genes. In my talk I will describe our work characterizing the worm gut microbiome and the role of host genetics in shaping its structure and function. I will describe in greater detail the identified involvement of the conserved TGFb/BMP pathway in controlling commensal abundance and function, and will consider the implications of this for pathogenic potential of commensal blooms and dysbiosis. Abstract by Michael Shapira
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February 2020
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