Laura Brettell

Project title: Using insect-specific viruses to block transmission of mosquito borne viruses.

Laura uses insect-specific viruses to block transmission of mosquito borne viruses.Mosquitoes transmit viruses that can be pathogenic to humans, like dengue and Zika viruses (ZIKV). Low-and middle-income countries (LMICs) bear the brunt of this. Mosquitoes can also be infected with viruses that cannot infect vertebrates. These insect-specific viruses (ISVs) are interesting to the vector community as they can change how human-pathogenic viruses replicate. The mosquito virome is largely uncharacterised and few ISVs have been explored. Laura’s work aims to detect and isolate novel ISVs from mosquitoes, testing their ability to reduce replication of ZIKV in cell culture.