Professor Ruth-Anne Sandaa er tildelt 12 mill kr fra Norges forskningsråd for prosjektet Deciphering Virus -Host coevolution across the domains of life (VireVap). Prosjektet skal gjennomføres over en periode på 4 år, med partnere fra UiO og University of New Brunswick, Canada.
VireVap, vil undersøke grunnleggende aspekter ved virus-vert-interaksjoner og deres rolle i evolusjonære- og økosystemprosesser:
Viruses are central for understanding the evolution of life. All organisms on our planet can be infected by many different types of viruses that directly shape the function and structure of their host communities. Viruses are also strong drivers for the evolution of their host communities through increased mutation rates and gene transfer events.
In the ocean, viruses play a crucial role in ecosystem functioning by, for instance, shaping biogeochemistry and transporting energy from the base of the food chain to upper tropic levels. Despite their ecologically and evolutionary importance, we know virtually nothing about how viruses and hosts interact in the environment and if there are conserved patterns of interaction, from acute infections to virus-host coexistence, that are generic for all virus-host relationships.
VireVap will apply model systems consisting of giant dsDNA viruses and unicellular microalgae to provide generic information about coevolution of viruses and their hosts. The short generation time of our microalgae hosts offer an experimental advantage as we can study several generations in a short time span. Further, our giant viruses contain a range of genes associated with cellular processes found across the three domains of life, and exhibit diverse infection strategies, from acute infection to chronic or persistent relationships between the viruses and their hosts. Thus, our model systems mirror the diverse viral infectious strategies found in both uni- and multicellular virus-host systems and enable the search for universal patterns in viral-host interactions.
By using an interdisciplinary approach, incorporating microbial ecology, evolutionary biology, modeling and molecular genetics VireVap will provide novel information on conserved coevolutionary traits, from acute infections to virus-host coexistence, in the environment and across the domains of life.