3- Virus hunting and Viral Ecology

Recently, Yann Hewson's lab (@Cornell University) found that densoviruses were associated with a lethal disease causing mass mortality in starfish populations expanding the host range of densoviruses to echninoderms.

To understand the diversity and prevalence of densoviruses in insects (the most diverse animal group on earth), we are developing a viral metagenomics approach, limiting this study to the prevalence and diversity of densoviruses in natural and agri-food ecosystems of our Mediterranean regions.

Our understanding of pathogenesis has moved from Koch's (19th century) concept of "one pathogen-one disease" to that of the "pathobiome", which integrates the pathogen in its complex environment where the host (animal or plant) becomes an ecosystem and the interactions studied by "omics" tools. Virology embraces this new field and we are gathered in a community of "pathobiomers" including pathologists (bacteria, viruses, fungi), ecologists and mathematicians. This opens up new challenges in microbiology in general and virology in particular. "Pathobiome or microbiology in the era of big data".
For more details :  http://www.mem.inra.fr/.