Projecten
Hidden collections: uncovering the diversity and evolutionary histories of viruses from archived specimens
Many important zoonotic viruses in humans such as Ebola, Zika and
the HIV-precursors have emerged, and continue to do so, from
Afrotropical mammals in the Congo basin. This region also holds one
of the highest mammal diversities in the world, of which thousands of
specimens are stored in the museum collections of RBINS, RMCA
and CSB-UNIKIS. From the same region, KU Leuven stores
thousands of archived pathology specimens of human origin. These
are not just collections of mammal tissues and human biopsies: the
genomic material of the viruses that these hosts had been carrying
have been stored safely in these tissue collections as well. The main
objective of the proposed project is to estimate the emergence
potential of zoonotic viruses from the Afrotropics. We will do so
through reconstructing virus evolutionary histories in relation to their
hosts, based on virus genomic data generated from our tissue
collections. We will test whether particular taxonomic or ecological
groups of mammals hold a higher diversity of viruses, and/or viruses
with higher cross-species emergence potential. This project connects
a consortium of expert virologists, evolutionary biologists, phylogeneticists, museum curators and taxonomists. We believe that
through working together, the proposed project will lead to ground-breaking new insights into the relationships between host taxonomy,
host traits and the relative probabilities for different viruses to emerge
in new host species – such as humans.
Hoofdonderzoeker:
Datum:
2022 2025Medewerkers:
Externe partners:
Gryseels Sophie (supervisor)Lemey Philippe (Supervisor)
Verheyen Erik (Co-Supervisor)