It's all in the genes for Jayme Souza-Neto, assistant professor in Kansas State University's College of Veterinary Medicine. His expertise in next-generation sequencing and functional genomics is part of a collaborative research project with researchers at the Agricultural Research Service, or ARS, in the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Souza-Neto is working with William Wilson, Dana Mitzel and other USDA researchers through a non-assistance co-operative agreement to look at the transmission of arboviruses that cause diseases in livestock.
"Dr. Wilson and ARS colleagues are interested in studying transboundary animal diseases like Rift Valley fever and Japanese encephalitis — very relevant diseases with significant economic impact that can affect spread through multiple countries through vectors such as mosquitoes," Souza-Neto said. "Those viruses typically trigger the host immune responses, which may involve multiples genes that start or stop certain defense functions in response to an infection."
Souza-Neto uses next-generation sequencing coupled with modern gene silencing/knockout technologies to learn more about the genes found to be responsive to these types of viruses and how each one functions. With more knowledge, researchers can then find ways to mitigate the spread of these diseases.
"Scientists understand only a small fraction of how arboviruses emerge, are maintained, replicate inside a host, transmit between vectors and hosts, and spread across a population," Wilson said. He is the principal investigator for the project "Host and Vector Transcriptional Responses for Transboundary Arboviral Disease of Livestock."
"Our goal is to develop analysis tools that can be used to characterize and compare viruses' genetic material and determine the factors and paths that these viruses use to infect a host," Wilson said.
Once samples are collected, the researchers can use next-generation sequencing and bioinformatics tools to look at the virus species in the samples.
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