Objective
At some point in their life all animals will be challenged by the threat of infectious disease. How an animal copes with pathogens will depend on their ability to resist infection or to minimise the virulence of disease once a pathogen has invaded. Accordingly, understanding the mechanisms behind the defence against infection and virulence has been a major goal of not only evolutionary biologists interested in host-pathogen interactions, but also epidemiologists involved in public health considerations and agriculturalists attempting to minimise the impact of pests. However, despite the importance and widespread occurrence of host-pathogen interactions, very little is known about the genetic architecture underlying the different lines of defence that animals use to prevent infectious disease. I propose a research program that will examine the evolutionary genetic basis of host-pathogen interactions in the crustacean Daphnia magna and its bacterium pathogen Pasteuria ramosa. To do so I will take advantage of a newly developed, high coverage quantitative trail loci (QTL) panel to quantify the genomic basis of virulence in this species and the potential role that the host-immune system has in defence against infectious disease. I will also use a novel experimental evolution approach to explore the co-evolutionary link between the ability of a host to resist infection and the resulting severity of disease. This innovative blend of my expertise in evolutionary manipulations and multivariate statistics with the new challenge provided by state of the art genomic techniques, will allow for considerable advances to be made in our understanding of how host and pathogen genomes interact to influence infectious disease. Moreover, by integrating aspects of evolutionary genetics, genomics and immunology, this project will foster significant cross-disciplinary collaborations and enhance Switzerland and Europe’s reputation for integrative evolutionary research.
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.
- medical and health sciences health sciences public health
- natural sciences biological sciences microbiology bacteriology
- medical and health sciences health sciences infectious diseases
- medical and health sciences basic medicine immunology
- natural sciences biological sciences genetics genomes
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Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Topic(s)
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.
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.
Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
FP7-PEOPLE-2009-IIF
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Funding Scheme
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.
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.
Coordinator
4051 Basel
Switzerland
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.