Louise Moncla, Ph.D.

Research

My lab will reconstruct how avian influenza viruses accumulate mutations that allow them to jump from birds to humans. Viruses mutate nearly every time they copy their RNA, and pandemics can occur when an individual virus draws a “winning hand” of adaptive mutations that promote replication in human cells and human-to-human transmission. Though earlier studies have suggested that minimal sets of mutations are necessary for human infection, we found that avian viruses isolated from infected humans often do not harbor any of these genetic changes, suggesting that these mutations alone are not predictive of viral risk. Now, using an array of cutting-edge tools from epidemiology, genomics, and computational modeling, my group will capitalize on data from ~20,000 avian flu virus genomes and catalog mutations that are found more often in viruses isolated from humans than from birds, and I will examine how these genetic changes and their associated pathways combine into a single virus capable of infecting human cells. My work will facilitate surveillance of avian viruses that have the potential to spread in humans and could lead to the development of vaccination strategies to prevent future outbreaks.