Inferring the Unobservable: Using Models to Reveal Ecology and Parasite Adaptation Within the Host

A Department of Computational Biology Field Membership Seminar

Featuring Dr. Megan A. Greischar, Assistant Professor, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Cornell University

Pathogenic organisms exhibit incredible diversity in within host dynamics, variation that influences disease severity and spread. Malaria parasites represent a microcosm of this diversity, with considerable reported differences in rates of multiplication in the blood, synchrony of development within red blood cells, and investment into the production of specialized transmission stages. Yet these traits are not easy to measure and standardized methods rarely exist. My lab uses models to identify ideal strategies given current understanding of within-host ecology and to infer actual patterns from time series data, with the goal of understanding the adaptive significance of diverse parasite life cycles.