DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Socially facilitated E. coli transmission in ringtailed lemurs: Social behaviors that prevent and promote the transmission of disease

社会交往会导致寄生虫的传播，但尚不清楚哪些行为在促进或预防传播事件方面特别重要。要回答这个问题，必须研究宿主的行为和病原体的传播。通过同时分析野生环尾狐猴的社会数据和一种常见肠道细菌的遗传数据，研究人员的目标是确定宿主的特征及其关系，这些特征往往会阻止或促进传播事件。这项研究将提供迄今为止对社会促进传播的最直接的测试之一，并且可以为寄生虫在人群中未来传播的预测模型提供信息。为此，本研究还将采用新的遗传学方法，这些方法可能广泛应用于寄生虫传播机制的许多问题。研究人员将通过将环尾狐猴的社会互动网络与E.杆菌他们将在一年的时间里收集数据，以评估社会行为的季节性变化如何影响共享单倍型的模式，并确定E. coli单倍型的变化。个体通常具有独特的居民单倍型，当在群体成员中发现短暂的单倍型时，可以潜在地告知每个个体在传播中的作用。研究人员将使用E.将大肠杆菌作为模式“寄生虫”是因为其在哺乳动物中的普遍存在便于确定所有个体之间的传播动力学，并且其基因组的广泛知识允许使用新的单基因座高通量测序方法，该方法将允许快速区分比使用传统多基因座方法可行的多得多的分离株。如本文所提出的，靶向一个基因座的高通量测序方法目前用于微生物组研究中以区分细菌的种或属，但它们尚未被修改以区分单一种的菌株。研究人员提出了在E.杆菌本研究的数据将存储在“life.bio“服务器上。所有序列数据将上传至GenBank。

Social interactions cause the spread of parasites but it is not known which behaviors are particularly important in the promotion or prevention of transmission events. To answer this question, both the behavior of the host and the spread of the pathogen must be studied. By simultaneously analyzing social data from wild ringtailed lemurs and genetic data from a common gut bacterium, the researchers aim to identify the characteristics of the host and of their relationships that tend to prevent or promote transmission events. This study will provide one of the most direct tests of socially facilitated transmission to date and in doing so, can inform predictive models for the future spread of parasites in human populations. To this end, this study will also employ novel genetic methods that can potentially be widely applied to many questions about the mechanisms of parasite spread.The researchers will examine if and to what extent patterns of association explain the transmission dynamics of an actual bacterial organism by correlating the social interaction network of ringtailed lemurs with incidences of shared haplotypes of E. coli. They will collect data over the course of a year to assess how seasonal shifts in social behavior influence the pattern of shared haplotypes, and to determine the resident and transient nature of E. coli haplotypes across time. Individuals typically harbor a unique resident haplotype, which when found as a transient haplotype in a group member, can potentially inform each individual's role in transmission. The researchers will use E. coli as a model "parasite" because its ubiquity among mammals facilitates the determination of transmission dynamics among all individuals and the extensive knowledge of its genome permits the use of a novel one-locus high throughput sequencing approach that will allow rapid differentiation of many more isolates than is feasible using traditional multi-locus methods. High throughput sequencing methods that target one locus, as proposed here, are currently used in microbiome research to differentiate species or genera of bacteria, but they have not been modified to differentiate strains of a single species. The researchers propose some of the first loci to do this in E. coli. Data from this study will stored on "life.bio" server. All sequence data will be uploaded onto GenBank.