Congratulations to NSF COMPASS Center members Brian R. Wasik and Colin Parrish from the Parrish Lab at the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine on the publication of their paper, “Distinct evolutionary patterns of endemic and emerging parvoviruses and the origin of a new pandemic virus,” in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). This paper investigates virus transmission between different animal hosts, by reconstructing over 60 years of feline parvovirus and comparing it with canine parvovirus.
One main takeaway is the importance of studying animal-to-animal virus transmission as a comparative model to better understand how viruses move between hosts and potentially cause outbreaks in humans. “What we’re basically trying to understand are what are the rules of the game? What are the avenues and barriers that allow viruses to jump from one host into another?” Brian says.
“This provides a good tractable model of a part of a virus system that’s well understood,” says Brian, about studying the parvovirus pandemic in dogs. Parvoviruses are small DNA viruses, as opposed to more common RNA emerging viruses, but the same emergence process has been observed. Studying a unique system is part of a process to expand the field. “If researchers gather some of those data points, hopefully it would allow us to figure out whether the common themes of this jumping process that occurs, that will better inform the models that we’re building in the NSF COMPASS Center,” Brian adds.
Researchers believe that in order to predict pandemic potential of a virus in humans, we need to analyze cases of viruses jumping between animal species, including companion, domesticated, agricultural, and wild animals, which directly relates to the ongoing research at NSF COMPASS.
Read the publication here.