I am a graduate student at section of Virology, the Department of Biomedical Sciences and Public Health.
Emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) are major threats to human and veterinary public health. Many of the EIDs are zoonotic diseases that can spread from animals to human and among all viral EIDs, majority of them originate from vector-borne viruses. Based on different socio-economical, environmental and ecological factors different regions have been identified where new EIDs are most likely to originate, called hot-spots. Thus, it is highly important to investigate viruses circulating in such areas to prepare for future introductions of new pathogens and combat these infections.
The aim of my current study is to investigate viral pathogens circulating in the wildlife-livestock interface, for a preparedness of new emerging infectious diseases. This includes characterizing the viral flora of potential reservoirs and different arthropod vectors in Mozambique using viral metagenomics. Sample collection, sample preparation, deep sequencing and bioinformatics analysis of sequencing data are the major steps of viral metagenomic workflow. This provides the opportunity to generate unbiased characterization of different viral populations from different samples as well as to identify novel and/or highly divergent viruses. This study is a collaborative project between Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and Eduardo Mondlane University, Mozambique funded by SIDA.
Prior to the start of my PhD I worked on pathogenesis of Equine arteritis virus (EAV) and showed that EAV induced cell death is associated with activation of the intrinsic apoptotic signaling pathway (Cholleti et al, 2012) and activation of NF-kB pathway in EAV infection is MyD88 dependent and promotes viral replication (Mottahedin et al, 2013). I received my Bachelor’s degree in Biotechnology from JNTU Hyderabad, India and my Master’s in Biology (Cell and Molecular Biology) from Uppsala University Sweden.
