Interactions in living systems

Vector Bionomics And Control

Intriguing Virus Found For The First Time In Italy

The Ljungan virus (LV) was discovered 10 years ago in wild voles in Sweden and has recently been associated with several human diseases, including diabetes. LV was reported for the first time in Italy in bank voles (Myodes glareolus) and yellow-necked mice (Apodemus flavicollis) by Hauffe and colleagues in the Journal of Wildlife Diseases in 2010, significantly increasing the geographical and species range of this pathogen. The distribution of LV among wild and domestic mammal species is now being investigated at local and European levels using PCR technology in order to assess the potential significance of the virus as a human pathogen, identify possible zoonotic sources and lay the groundwork for possible vaccine development.

[Heidi C. Hauffe]

Automated Removal Of Noisy Data In Phylogenomic Analyses

A new test procedure for improving the accuracy in phylogeny reconstruction was developed in order to evaluate and solve problems related to substitutional saturation in the data. This method uses patterns of substitution in DNA sequences as a basis to establish relationships between species. The proposed test helped to resolve issues of diversification among placental mammals and demonstrated that the correct picture of evolution, accepted, shows rodents and rabbits (Glires) as a sister group to Primates. This work has recently been published in the Journal of Molecular Evolution.

[Vadim

Goremykin, Svetlana Nikiforova]

Continuous outbreaks of several vectorborne diseases around the globe has raised the awareness of the European Community which has invested in research on this topic under the “Health” section of the VII FP. Eurowestnile is a small-scale collaborative project involving 14 partners in 7 countries and has the strategic aim of developing an integrated European research on West Nile virus. It is specifically focussed on generating new knowledge and innovative products of particular interest to European citizens for the control and prevention of the disease.

EDENext (Biology and control of vectorborne infections in Europe) is a large-scale collaborative project involving 46 partners in 22 counties; its main goal is to understand and explain the biological, ecological and epidemiological processes driving vector-borne disease emergence in order to develop methods and tools to improve prevention, surveillance and control of vector populations and vector-borne human and animal diseases.

[Annapaola

Rizzoli]

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