Every winter, a dozen different viruses compete and cooperate inside the same human airways, yet scientists have almost always studied them one at a time. This project treats the entire respiratory tract as a shared ecosystem, asking how interactions between viruses—not just their individual behaviour—shape which strains spread and how severe the resulting epidemics become. The team will analyse patient samples from the Glasgow population, sequencing the genomes of influenza, respiratory syncytial virus, coronaviruses, and other common pathogens to link genetic changes with patterns of circulation. Current approaches miss these cross-virus dynamics, which likely influence disease severity and transmission. If successful, the work could improve epidemic forecasting—predicting not just whether flu will surge, but which other viruses might amplify or suppress its impact. It could also inform vaccination strategies that account for viral competition, potentially making seasonal jabs more effective. This is fundamental science with direct public health relevance: understanding the ecology of the respiratory tract as a whole, rather than treating each infection in isolation, could quietly reshape how we anticipate and prevent the most common human diseases.
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Respiratory Infections: Epidemiology, evolution and ecology of respiratory viruses Dr Pablo Murcia, Lead Investigator, in collaboration with Dr Louise Matthews (Institute of Biodiversity Animal Health and Comparative Medicine, University of Glasgow); Dr Rory Gunson (West of Scotland Specialist Virology Centre); Dr Jim McMenamin (Health Protection Scotland); Dr Robert Gifford, (MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research). Respiratory infections are the most common disease of humans and a large proportion of them is caused by viral pathogens that include influenza A and B viruses, respiratory syncytial virus, human metapneumovirus, coronaviruses, rhinoviruses, adenoviruses and parainfluenzaviruses. From an ecological perspective, the respiratory tract could be considered the ecosystem that the aforementioned viruses cohabitate. Notably, respiratory viruses have been traditionally studied in isolation, an approach that does not capture the interactions among viruses that commonly exist and are likely to play a role in disease presentation and spread. Here we will study respiratory viruses as a group in order to understand how virus-virus interactions impact on their evolution and epidemiology. To this end we will first examine the epidemiology of viral respiratory infections in the Glasgow population. Further we will sequence the genomes of a large number of respiratory viruses derived from patients in order to link changes in virus genetic composition with patterns of virus circulation. Results from this work will have profound public health implications, from improved forecasting of epidemics to the design of novel vaccination strategies against the most common pathogens of humans.
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