PhD Opportunity – Barriers to influenza virus cross-species transmission

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Project outline: Influenza A viruses (IAV) are the cause of a major global health burden in humans and animals. Wild aquatic birds are the main natural reservoir of IAV and are a source of infection for domestic birds, and other species. Spillover of avian IAV into humans results in severe or even lethal disease. These spillover events are typically not followed by extensive human-to-human transmission chains, but they are a risk to global health as they could enable the first step towards human adaptation and the generation of pandemic IAV strains. Multiple barriers have been identified that hamper avian IAV transmission and adaptation in humans including an interferon stimulated gene, BTN3A3, that we recently identified (doi: 10.1038/s41586-023-06261-8). However, several gaps remain in our understanding of how certain avian IAV subtypes/lineages are able to cross the species-barrier and spill over in humans or other mammals. Our laboratory aims to investigate the mechanisms that allow certain avian viruses to spillover into humans using a mixture of virological and evolutionary approaches. Understanding what makes emerging viruses succeed or fail to spillover, and possibly thrive, in human populations are crucial to understand how we manage viral emergence.

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