Emerging viruses in the Amazon basin
The project “WildEmerg” investigates the presence, prevalence and diversity of viruses in South American wildlife and mosquitoes.
| Duration: | 01/2019 - 01/2022 |
| Third-party funded: | yes |
| Involved Department(s): | Dept Wildlife Diseases |
| Leibniz-IZW Project Leader(s): | Alex Greenwood (Dept Wildlife Diseases) |
| Leibniz-IZW Project Team: | Gábor Czirják, Juan Li (all: Dept Wildlife Diseases) |
| Consortium Partner(s): | Institute of Global Health of Barcelona (Spain), Universidade Federal Rural da Amazonia (Brazil), Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia (Peru), Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona (Spain) |
| Current Funding Organisation: | German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) within the ERA-Net LAC (Network of the European Union, Latin America and the Caribbean Countries on Joint Innovation and Research Activities) |
| Research Foci: | |
| Understanding traits and evolutionary adaptations | |
| Understanding wildlife health and disturbed homeostasis |
Arboviruses (e.g. West Nile Virus) are known to be transmitted from mosquitoes to humans. However, humans may not be the natural target species, even in urban and peri-urban settings. As part of the project “WildEmerg”, we are examining South American wildlife and mosquitoes for the presence, prevalence and diversity of viruses (particularly arboviruses). The aim is to determine in which wildlife species in the Amazon basin viruses and haematoparasites can be found, and what levels of diversity they exhibit compared to strains identified in humans. For this, we are applying novel high throughput hybridization capture based approaches and new long inverse PCR PacBio sequencing approaches developed in lab.
Selected Publications
coming soon