Jennifer Havens
Postdoctoral fellow, NIH
The CEIRR CMC holds bi-monthly research seminars that feature leading researchers who develop state-of-the-art computational methods to better understand respiratory viruses. These events are designed to facilitate in-depth discussions and provide ample opportunity for questions from the audience, with each seminar lasting 1 hour and 30 minutes.
Title: Selection and clock dynamics preceding the emergence of viral epidemics and variants
This seminar will discuss the application of a multi-partition selection model (RELAX), to pandemic/epidemic viruses in the host reservoir, prior to emergence, and after emergence. Examining the emergence of Ebola virus, Marburg virus, mpox virus, influenza A virus (pdm09), and SARS-CoV-2, there is no evidence of a change in selection intensity immediately prior to outbreaks in humans compared with typical selection within reservoir hosts, suggesting extensive pre-zoonotic adaptation is not necessary for human-to-human transmission of zoonotic viruses. To address reassortment and recombination, the existing RELAX framework has been extended to capture multiple evolutionary histories (trees) with one model.
This seminar will also present using a synonymous molecular clock inferred in a Bayesian framework (BEAST) to characterize evolution in different environments (prior to variant emergence, typical human-to-human transmission, intra-host evolution, and non-human animal hosts) of SARS-CoV-2. Molecular clock dynamics during intra-host evolution can match what is seen prior to variant emergence, while evolution during typical transmission and in non-human hosts appear differently. This finding supports the hypothesis that persistent infections were the likely source of many SARS-CoV-2 variants.
After you register, click on the Eventbrite event page for a zoom link.
Note: CEIRR CMC events are open only to CEIRR participants. The meeting and discussion are confidential.