Eco-Environmental Signatures Of Danger To Identify Melioidosis-Endemic Hotzones
Abstract
The proposed work will identify and characterize environmental factors and relationships between threat agent Burkholderia pseudomallei (Bp) and co-endemic species, exploring how their relationships affect the survival and virulence of Bp. The work will also explore the effects of the environmental characteristics of Bp and how it could affects disease incidence in humans with the intent of providing ecological signatures of virulence to improve prediction of disease incidents. The data will also help in understanding predator and host species of Bp, providing information useful for diagnostics and creating biocontrol efforts. Specific goals/milestones are to establish whether physical, epidemiologic, geophysical and ecological parameters can be linked to the presence of Bp in the environment, of to the virulence properties in mice; utilize massively parallel, high-throughput (HTS) metagenomic and transcriptomic sequencing approaches to identify ecological signatures of virulent Bp in the environment; isolate and identify co-endemic fauna from environmental specimens and characterize their interactions with Bp, and contribute to a global model of Bp endemicity and predicted spread.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Aug 04, 2021
- Source ID
- HDTRA12010013
Entities
People
- Christopher French
Organizations
- Defense Threat Reduction Agency
- Northern Arizona University