CAREER: Population Dynamics and Evolutionary Ecology of Viral Emergence

职业：病毒出现的种群动态和进化生态学

• 批准号: 1148879
• 负责人: John Dennehy
• 金额: $ 71.39万
• 依托单位: CUNY Queens College
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2012-06-01 至 2018-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1148879&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CAREER; Population; Dynamics; Evolutionary; Ecology

New viruses occasionally appear in human populations and can significantly affect public health as evidenced by the pandemic spread of HIV. However, little is known of the ecological and evolutionary factors that impact the population dynamics of emerging viruses. Part of the problem is that it is difficult to conduct experimental studies using pathogenic viruses and their animal hosts because of time, space and ethical constraints. Bacterial viruses and their bacterial hosts provide an easy to manipulate model system to study the dynamics of large virus and host populations over a short time scale. The proposal specifically addresses several prominent hypotheses regarding the emergence of viruses into new host types. The first aim is to ascertain whether initial virus fitness on the novel host is positively correlated with the probability of emergence. The second aim is to determine whether virus adaptation is enhanced in mixed host communities as compared to communities containing a single host type. The third aim is to establish whether gene flow between virus populations infecting different hosts enhances adaptive evolution. The fourth aim is to investigate the significance of translational adaptation (i.e., evolution of phage codon usage to match host tRNA abundance) in viral emergence. Together these experiments constitute one of the most comprehensive experimental approaches to the study of virus emergence attempted. Successful completion of the work may allow more realistic models of virus emergence and enhance our ability to identify and counteract potentially dangerous viruses.

新病毒偶尔会在人群中出现，并可能严重影响公众健康，艾滋病毒的大流行就是明证。然而，对影响新出现病毒种群动态的生态和进化因素知之甚少。部分问题在于，由于时间、空间和伦理方面的限制，很难利用致病性病毒及其动物宿主进行实验性研究。细菌病毒及其细菌宿主为研究大型病毒和宿主群体在短时间内的动态提供了一个易于操作的模型系统。该建议具体解决了关于病毒进入新宿主类型的几个突出假设。第一个目的是确定病毒在新宿主上的初始适应度是否与出现概率呈正相关。第二个目的是确定与含有单一宿主类型的群落相比，混合宿主群落中的病毒适应性是否得到增强。第三个目的是确定感染不同宿主的病毒种群之间的基因流动是否会促进适应性进化。第四个目的是研究翻译适应（即噬菌体密码子使用的进化以匹配宿主tRNA丰度）在病毒出现中的意义。这些实验共同构成了研究病毒突现的最全面的实验方法之一。这项工作的成功完成可能会使病毒出现的模型更加现实，并增强我们识别和对抗潜在危险病毒的能力。