Why has the SARS-CoV-2 virus ravaged the global human population, but many other animal viruses haven’t? Using nematode worms as a model, researchers at Penn State conducted a set of experiments to investigate the factors influencing the disease outcomes of virus spillover events. They found that the species of the host influences whether a virus will take off in a new population. For example, some species never get infected, while others become infected and readily transmit the virus to other individuals within the species.
September 30, 2022
Why has the SARS-CoV-2 virus ravaged the global human population, but many other animal viruses haven’t? Using nematode worms as a model, researchers at Penn State conducted a set of experiments to investigate the factors influencing the disease outcomes of virus spillover events. They found that the species of the host influences whether a virus will take off in a new population. For example, some species never get infected, while others become infected and readily transmit the virus to other individuals within the species.
“Pathogens spill over into humans with somewhat alarming frequency, and a ton of terrific research has gone into determining where and when spillover is most likely,” said David Kennedy, assistant professor of biology. “However, experimentally studying virus spillover in the lab to understand the likelihood that a virus will be transmissible in a new host is hugely challenging, especially with the replication needed to gain scientific insight.”
Clara Shaw, a postdoctoral scholar at Penn State, who is starting a new position in January as an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota Duluth, noted that worms are a powerful experimental system.
“You can have an entire population of hosts in a single petri dish, and you can fit 50 replicate populations in a space the size of a shoebox,” said Shaw.
