Daniel Janies, Ph.D. Carol Grotnes Belk Distinguished Professor of Bioinformatics and Genomics College of Computing and Informatics University of North Carolina at Charlotte Genes and geography of infectious diseases Analytics Frontiers Conference
Our goal is to develop means to analyze and share diverse types of data on pathogens
Pathogens underlying influenza like illness: UK, May 2000-April 2001 Creer et al., 2005
Pathogens underlying influenza like illness: Netherlands, November 1998 – June 2001
Chicago A B Toronto C Washington, DC Three cases of influenza like illness
If we sequence the genomes of the pathogens the three outbreaks can be interconnected and understood via their connections to background data
Where did the pathogen originate ? From Asia? From Europe? From South America?
Or did the pathogen originate in North America and will it spread abroad ? To Asia ? To Europe? To South America?
Which hosts carry a pathogen ?
Indonesia Korea and Japan Host taxa H5N1 influenza
Which trade processes carry a pathogen? chickens ducks smuggled eagle
Molecular Evolution of the Avian Influenza (H5N1) PB2 protein. This mutation confers increased replication in mammals
H7N PB2 E627K This mutation confers increased viral replication in mammals
Moon Fishery (India) Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, US Food and Drug Administration
Next steps – genetic surveillance of infectious diseases US FDA, state and international partners
Global spread of Salmonella bareilly UNC joint work with US Food and Drug Administration University of Maryland University North Carolina at Charlotte Ohio State University New York State Department of Health Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
Salmonella bareilly, genetic tree, place metadata.
Africa, SE Asia, South Pacific, 2007-presentSouth America, Caribbean, present Global Spread of Zika Virus
Evolution of Zika’s envelope protein
Summary Our analyses can handle very large, diverse data sets. Results are visual and biomedical analytics that lead to actionable conclusions and new research directions. Meaningful use of heath IT, including commodity sequencing, will come from coordinated national and international efforts in infection control and biosurveillance.
Acknowledgements Organizers and Sponsors The Belk Family Defense Applied Research Projects Agency Defense Threat Reduction Agency US National Science Foundation University of North Carolina Game-Changing Research Fund UNC Charlotte: College of Computing and Informatics, Department of Bioinformatics and Genomics, Graduate School