Genome Tracer: Microbial Genomic Network Analysis to Understand, Monitor, and Mitigate Pathogen Transmission in Animals

Infectious diseases in animals can cause many problems such as impacting the economy, harming
wildlife and the environment, food security, and even making people sick (zoonoses). Because of issues like
pollution, climate change, and agricultural intensification, we expect these diseases to happen more often and to
be worse over time. So, it is very important to understand how these diseases get into and spread within our
food systems in Canada. This will help us determine how to reduce the risk of these diseases spreading. One
way we can do this is by studying the genetic code of the pathogens (germs) that cause these diseases – by
looking at their DNA to see how they’re related to each other. However, the way we usually do this, using
something called phylogenetic trees, has some problems. It can’t tell us which pathogen came from where, and
it assumes all pathogens came from one common ancestor pathogen, which makes it hard to understand large
disease outbreaks. To address this issue, we made a new tool called GenomeTracer – a detective tool for
diseases.

Faculty Supervisor:

Chelsea Himsworth

Student:

Partner:

Provincial Health Services Authority

Discipline:

Life Sciences

Sector:

Health and Related Sciences & Technology; Information and cultural industries; Professional, scientific and technical services; Public administration

University:

The University of British Columbia

Program: