Events

15 Sep 2016

Pandemics past and present

At this presentation, Pandemics past and present, Professor Edward C Holmes will show how modern genomic techniques, notably meta-transcriptomics and ancient DNA, can provide important new information on microbial biodiversity, origins and evolution.

Edward will demonstratrate how modern molecular and evolutionary techniques have provided a unique ‘genomic anatomy’ of the recent outbreak of Ebola in West Africa, arguably the most densely sampled human epidemic ever.  He will also show how the analysis of ‘ancient DNA’ from archival human remains (including those present in medical collections) can inform on past infectious disease epidemics, focusing on an infamous bacterial disease – plague – where the recovery of genomes >5000 years old is now possible, as well as early spread of the malarial parasite Plasmodium falciparum, and the virus responsible for smallpox.

Professor Edward Holmes is an NHMRC Australia Fellow and Professor at the University of Sydney. Prior to joining the University of Sydney, he was the Verne M. Willaman Chair in the Life Sciences at The Pennsylvania State University, USA.