Project description
How our herds shaped hidden pathogens
For thousands of years, humans have domesticated livestock, but how this affected animal diseases and those that can spread to humans remains largely unknown. Studies have focused on human remains. The ERC-funded HERDPATH project aims to analyse 10 000 years of faunal remains from Eurasia, focusing on sheep and goats. Researchers will map the genomes of both hosts and pathogens. The project will track how domestication, inbreeding, and immune gene variation influenced disease occurrence over time. HERDPATH will create the first multi-species molecular archive of livestock pathogens, revealing the co-evolution of animals and microbes. Insights gained could improve understanding of zoonoses, future outbreaks, and food security, tracing the genetic legacy of our herds.
Objective
Palaeogenomics has transformed our understanding of the genetic consequences of domestication, particularly for livestock species, first brought into the anthropological sphere ~10,000 years ago in Southwest Asia. However, we know little of how domestication shaped the evolution and frequency of pathogens affecting livestock. Moreover, the evolution and occurrence of zoonoses - pathogens infecting both animals and humans - in Neolithic and later societies has been debated, but studies have focused on human remains to obtain ancient pathogen genomes, neglecting animal sources.
HERDPATH will address this deficit through large-scale palaeogenomic screening of faunal remains from Eurasia across 10,000 years. Focusing on sheep and goats, two of our oldest domesticates and which share a high number of common diseases with humans, HERDPATH will analyse both pathogen and ruminant genomes to reveal the dynamic between ancestry, husbandry-induced inbreeding, immune gene variation, and pathogen occurrence through time. Bioinformatic screening will produce a temporal, multi-species archive of pathogen-positive livestock, providing the first molecular baseline of infectious disease presence in domestic herds. Time-stamped pathogen genomes will permit the timing of key evolutionary events such as host adaptation and the origin of lineages circulating today. Using data derived from multiple livestock species, HERDPATH will explore the co-evolutionary trajectory of pathogens and immune genes since domestication.
Exploiting temporal genomes from underexplored sources will reveal how domestication shaped pathogen evolution towards increasing host adaptation, helping us to model the evolutionary dynamics of future livestock disease, zoonosis outbreaks, and food security. HERDPATH will be a step-change in our understanding of the consequences of domestication; how it drove pathogen evolution and the genetic makeup of our herds, shaped animal health, and our own health in return.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- agricultural sciences animal and dairy science domestic animals animal husbandry
- natural sciences biological sciences genetics genomes
- medical and health sciences health sciences public health epidemiology zoonosis
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) ERC-2025-STG
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4 Dublin
Ireland
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