Name and Surname of the Supervisor: Gytis Dudas
Institution (Company), Department: VU GMC BTI
Preliminary Topic: Detection, sequencing and analysis of a highly prevalent mosquito virus
Short Description of the Internship Work: Wuhan mosquito virus 6 (WuMV-6) is a metagenomically detected and highly prevalent orthomyxovirus of Culex mosquitoes. Found on every inhabited continent to date, it is able to cross vast distances in relatively short periods of time - phylogenetic evidence points to its spread around the perimeter of the Pacific Ocean within the last 20 years and contact between viruses found in Australia and California as recently as eight years ago. As mosquitoes are not thought to travel very far in their lifetimes, it is suspected that WuMV-6 might be migrating within another host, such as a vertebrate. Signatures of diversifying selection concentrated in WuMV-6’s surface protein gp64 would seem to confirm this, as arthropods are incapable of mounting an immune response that could exert a significant evolutionary pressure over the timescales observed, unlike the vertebrate antibody-based adaptive immune response.
Though never detected in Lithuania, WuMV-6 has been found in other European countries such as Sweden and Greece, indicating that it is likely circulating here too. Dr. Rasa Bernotienė (Nature Research Center) collected Culex mosquitoes from around Lithuania during the summer of 2023, and dr. Miglė Tomkuvienė has designed primers to detect the virus using PCR. This project involves wet-lab and dry-lab components. WuMV-6 is an RNA virus and the wet-lab part of this project will therefore involve DNA and RNA extraction from mosquitoes. If this PCR survey of mosquito pools is successful, the student will also carry out WuMV-6 genome amplification and sequencing using the Oxford Nanopore Technologies MinION. The dry-lab part will involve a phylogenetic analysis of the sequences resulting from the wet-lab part to place Lithuanian WuMV-6 sequences in the context of an unpublished dataset of WuMV-6 sequences. Should virus detection or sequencing fail, this unpublished dataset would be used as a basis for a more computationally-focused project.
Qualification Requirements (Degree): BSc, MSc
Application Deadline: 2024-03-01
Additional Comments: Basic experience in the wet-lab, an interest in learning phylogenetics, Master’s students preferred but not strictly necessary. Experience working with RNA would be very useful.