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

社会互动导致寄生虫的传播，但尚不清楚哪些行为在促进或预防传播事件中特别重要。为了回答这个问题，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，研究人员旨在确定宿主的特征以及它们之间倾向于阻止或促进传播事件的关系。这项研究将提供迄今为止社会促进传播的最直接测试之一，这样做可以为寄生虫未来在人群中传播的预测模型提供信息。为此，本研究还将采用新的遗传方法，这些方法可能广泛应用于有关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共享大肠杆菌单倍型的发生率联系起来，研究关联模式是否以及在多大程度上解释了实际细菌有机体的传播动力学。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，并确定大肠杆菌单倍型在时间上的驻留和短暂性。个体通常拥有一个独特的常驻单倍型，当在群体成员中发现它作为一个瞬时单倍型时，可以潜在地告知每个个体在传播中的作用。研究人员将使用大肠杆菌作为模型“寄生虫”，因为它在哺乳动物中的普遍存在有助于确定所有个体之间的传播动态，而且对其基因组的广泛了解允许使用一种新的单位点高通量测序方法，这种方法将比使用传统的多位点方法能够快速区分更多的分离株。本文提出的针对一个基因座的高通量测序方法目前在微生物组研究中用于区分细菌的种类或属，但尚未对其进行修改以区分单一物种的菌株。研究人员提出了大肠杆菌中最早的一些基因座。这项研究的数据将存储在“生活”中。生物”服务器。所有序列数据将上传到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.