EAGER: Temporal Occurrence, Spatial Dynamics, and Host Diversity of Betacoronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2, with Implications for Mitigating Covid-19 Re-emergence

冻结的博物馆藏品提供了一个基本上未被开发的生物多样性基础设施，这可能会使人们能够以非常新和不同的方式研究流行病，比如SARS-CoV-2引起的流行病。该项目将利用大量来自野生哺乳动物的冰冻样本，并利用新的专业知识来开发强大的跨学科方法来研究野生动物出现的病原体。这项研究将检查西南生物博物馆基因组资源部的冷冻组织收藏品，这些标本来自中国附近的亚洲国家，是检测SARS-CoV-2病毒的理想选择。详细了解病原体在野外的分布以及它们如何跨越物种边界，包括切换到感染人类，可以为预防和缓解未来的人畜共患感染或再感染提供关键的基础。将开发充分利用这一生物多样性和人畜共患病原体基础设施的新工作流程。在过去几十年中，疾病生态学家和进化生物学家确定了病原体从水库寄主物种蔓延到人类种群的关键因素。了解该病毒在野生哺乳动物中的分布将有助于更好地评估人类种群与该病毒直接接触的可能性。病原体检测将通过分子方法在来自东亚的1000个目标(条形码)哺乳动物样本中进行，重点是SARS-CoV-2及其冠状病毒亲属。对于阳性组织，将使用为下游比较分析优化的冠状病毒既定技术对病毒全基因组进行测序。系统地理学方法将用于描述病毒和相关哺乳动物宿主的地理变异和历史人口学特征。这些努力将利用现有的自然历史收集材料，为SARS-CoV-2的演变、新冠肺炎的出现，以及更广泛的病原体出现和流行病学模型提供信息。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并已通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Frozen museum collections provide a largely untapped biodiversity infrastructure that would potentially allow for the study of pandemics, like that caused by SARS-CoV-2, in substantially new and different ways. This project will leverage a vast set of frozen samples from wild mammals and engage new expertise to develop powerful interdisciplinary approaches to studying pathogens that emerge from wildlife. This study will examine the frozen tissue collections of the Museum of Southwestern Biology’s Division of Genomic Resources (DGR) with specimens collected from Asian countries near China that are ideal for testing for SARS-CoV-2 virus. Detailed understanding of the distribution of pathogens in the wild and how they cross species boundaries, including switching to infect humans, could provide a critical foundation for prevention and mitigation of future zoonotic infections or reinfections. New workflows that fully leverage this biodiversity and zoonotic pathogen infrastructure will be developed. This project also provides training opportunities for students, including from underrepresented minorities, as well as outreach to the public.During the last few decades, disease ecologists and evolutionary biologists have identified key factors involved in the spillover of pathogens from reservoir host species into human populations. Understanding the distribution of the virus in wild mammals will contribute to a better assessment of the potential for direct contact between human populations and the virus. Pathogen detection will be carried out via molecular methods in tissues from 1,000 target (bar-coded) mammal specimens from eastern Asia with a special focus on SARS-CoV-2 and its coronavirus relatives. For positive tissues, sequencing of whole genomes of viruses will be conducted using established techniques for coronaviruses optimized for downstream comparative analyses. Phylogeographic methods will be used to characterize the geographic variation and historical demography of viruses and associated mammalian hosts. These efforts will leverage already existing natural history collection materials to inform SARS-CoV-2 evolution, Covid-19 emergence, and more generally pathogen emergence and epidemiological models.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.