Environmental Health and Infectious Disease: How Chemical Cocktails Help Drive Emerging Zoonoses in Mammals

"Come investigate the fascinating and important links between environmental pollution, immunotoxicity, and zoonotic viral infections. As part of the OneZoo Centre for Doctoral Training, the successful student will work with a multidisciplinary team of experts in Northern Ireland, Wales and England to study how chemicals in our environment affects the mammalian immune system and susceptibility to influenza viruses and coronaviruses that can jump species into humans. ""Chemical contaminants such as perfluorinated substances (PFAS) are immunotoxic, and thus may increase susceptibility to zoonotic infections like influenza, facilitating greater virus burden, mammalian adaptation and zoonotic potential. Interdisciplinary research is needed to help understand the importance of such interacting stressors for wildlife/human health. The emergence of zoonoses such as SARS-CoV-2 in 2019 greatly increased public awareness of spillover of viruses from wildlife. Recently, highly pathogenic avian influenza virus H5N1 has swept the world, and caused mass mortality among domestic and wild bird populations, with spillover into mammals sparking concern for human, as well as wildlife, health. Understanding emergence and spread of zoonoses is complicated by the highly heterogenous nature of the landscape with which they interact, a key aspect of which is the complex mixture of chemicals which now pollute all ecosystems (e.g. 60,000 synthetic chemicals used in the EU. Research has highlighted explicit links between environmental pollution and immunotoxicity since at least the 1990s. The proposed PhD will take an interdisciplinary approach linking the detection and monitoring of wildlife disease, and evaluating whether immune response and susceptibility (and mammal/human adaptation) are influenced by chemical pollution. We will also incorporate qualitative social sciences studies into people's relationship with wildlife. We will focus on the Eurasian otter, which is susceptible to coronaviruses and influenza viruses. Since 1992, Cardiff University has run a long term UK-wide programme of post mortem surveillance of otters, including chemical monitoring. Sampling locations will be selected based on differences in concentration of immunotoxic chemicals (e.g. perfluorooctanoate). Disease surveillance will include sampling for respiratory RNA viruses including IAVs, and CoVs, using molecular diagnostic assays. The student will estimate the prevalence of these viruses in otters in theUK, and evaluate putative drivers (e.g. for bird-flu H5N1:wild and domestic bird density/infection surveillance data, weather conditions, demography). Sequence data from positive samples will be compared with data from other (avian, human, other mammalian) sources to evaluate zoonotic potential, and implications for diagnostic sensitivity. Coinfections (including microparasites such as trematodes and Ixodes ticks) will also be recorded alongside other health indicators such as body condition index, to provide a holistic picture of health. Alongside this, the student will develop and test metagenomic tools to evaluate differential expression of genes linked to immune response. Research will explore the feasibility of applying shotgun metagenomics approaches for SNP analysis of immune genes, with the goal of evaluating chemical contaminants as drivers of susceptibility to disease. The project will allow the student to experience research at the interface of environmental, human, and wildlife health. Links within and outside academia, the interdisciplinary approach, and multi-national collaborations and positions held by members of the team, will provide an exciting stepping stone toward an international research career."