PIs: Cristina Lanzas, David Rasmussen, Daniel Dawson, Xinxia Peng (NC State)
Seed Grant in Pathogenic and Commensal Organisms
Most pathogens of humans, animals, and plants are able to survive or even grow in the environment outside of their hosts. Understanding the contribution of the environment to the pathogen lifecycle is critical to effectively control these pathogens, and to assess the risk of emergent pathogens. An important barrier to studying environmentally-transmitted diseases is the difficulty in quantifying environmental transmission. Our goal is to evaluate methods that combine genetic sequence data with epidemiological data to quantify environmental transmission.
Publications:
Dawson D, Rasmussen D, Peng X, and Lanzas C. (2021) Inferring environmental transmission using phylodynamics: a case-study using simulated evolution of an enteric pathogen. Journal of the Royal Society Interface 18(179): 20210041.
