Immune-gene evolution and susceptibility to pathogens in the Anthropocene

Understanding how genetic factors affect host-pathogen dynamics is essential to assess the risk of disease outbreaks, mortality, and transmission among species.

Many wildlife and human pathogens frequently switch host species and vary remarkably in pathogenicity, causing little or no mortality in some species and dramatic mass mortality in others.

However, drivers of pathogen susceptibility, transmission, and evolution in the wild are poorly understood.This study will use samples collected before, during, and after recent phocine distemper virus and influenza A epidemics among Northern European seal populations to investigate how variation in key immune system genes affects susceptibility to viral diseases.

Furthermore, it will investigate whether a historic bottleneck event purged vital genetic variation and increased the susceptibility of certain populations to viral epidemics.The study will employ state-of-the-art DNA sequencing methods, and population genomics will be used to control for background genetic variation and population structure.

The project will be carried out with M.T. Olsen at University of Copenhagen and L. Råberg at Lund University.

It will last for 36 months, app. equally distributed on DNA sequencing, data analyses, and writing manuscripts.The insights from this study will improve our understanding of genetic components to susceptibility to viral diseases, and will have important implications for conservation of wild animals and human public health.