Linking genetic variation in disease resistance and tolerance with heterogeneity in disease spread

Pedro VALE
Institute of Evolutionary Biology, School of Biological Sciences, University of Edinburgh, UK pedro.vale@ed.ac.uk

Research in our group addresses the causes and consequences of individual variation in health during infection. Broadly, we want to know why there is so much variation in 1) how sick individuals get 2) how sick individuals make others and 3) how pathogens spread and evolve in response to this variation. We take an experimental approach to this problem, using Drosophila melanogaster and its viral and bacterial pathogens as a powerful and genetically tractable model system for experimental epidemiology. I will show some recent and ongoing work where we try to understand the link between genetic variation in the ability to resist and tolerate infection with heterogeneity in key components of pathogen transmission: social aggregation, pathogen load at death, initial pathogen growth and pathogen shedding. We then use this data – which offers a level of empirical control and individual-level detail that is difficult to obtain in most wild or domesticated animal systems – to parameterise an epidemiological network model to ask how individual-level variation in these traits affect heterogeneity in epidemic dynamics.

Recent publications:

Siva-Jothy JA, M. Monteith K, Vale PF. Navigating infection risk during oviposition and cannibalistic foraging in a holometabolous insect. Behavioral Ecology. 2018; doi:10.1093/beheco/ary106

Gupta V, Vasanthakrishnan RB, Siva-Jothy J, Monteith KM, Brown SP, Vale PF. The route of infection determines Wolbachia antibacterial protection in Drosophila. Proceedings Royal Society B. 2017;284: 20170809. doi:10.1098/rspb.2017.0809

Gupta V, Vale PF. Nonlinear disease tolerance curves reveal distinct components of host responses to viral infection. Royal Society Open Science. 2017;4: 170342. doi:10.1098/rsos.170342

Gupta V, Stewart CO, Rund SSC, Monteith K, Vale PF. Costs and benefits of sublethal Drosophila C Virus infection. Journal of Evolutionary Biology. 2017;30: 1325–1335. doi:10.1111/jeb.13096

Vale PF, Fenton A, Brown SP. Limiting damage during infection: lessons from infection tolerance for novel therapeutics. PLoS Biology. 2014; doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001769

De septembre 2018 à juin 2019, les SEEM auront lieu à l’Université de Montpellier, bâtiment 23 (en face de l’ISEM), salle SC01 – voir flèche rouge sur le plan en pièce jointe.

From September 2018 to June 2019,  the SEEMs will take place at the University of Montpellier, building 23 (opposite ISEM), room SC01 – see red arrow in the attached map.