School of Biodiversity, One Health & Veterinary Medicine

Transmission is the critical process underlying infectious disease dynamics, but is rarely observed. Fine-grained viral genetic information and spatially resolved incidence data can provide important insights on the transmission process, yet combing spatial, temporal and genetic data remains a major statistical challenge.

This project aims to synergistically integrate epidemiological and genetic data from rabies viruses circulating endemically in Northern Tanzania to trace transmission pathways.

Key questions to be addressed are: how can whole genome sequences and spatiotemporal incidence data be effectively combined to reliably infer who transmitted infection to whom? And what does such synergistic analysis reveal about transmission processes of endemically circulating rabies viruses?

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First published: 10 August 2014