Ana Cristina Lemos de Matos
Post-Doc Researcher
“It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.”
Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
Host-parasite interactions are a supreme example of different genetic entities struggling to overcome one another and achieve evolutionary success, very often with a detrimental result to the opponent. The Red Queen's Hypothesis substantiates this idea: “For an evolutionary system, continuing development is needed just in order to maintain its fitness relative to the systems it is co-evolving with.” (Leigh Van Valen, 1973).
Viruses are bright masters in cellular processes mimicry and subversion in the host, especially immunity factors. Myxoma virus (MYXV), which is a member of the Leporipoxvirus genus, in the Poxviridae family, is a double stranded DNA (dsDNA) that causes a lethal disease, myxomatosis, in European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) and has its natural reservoir in North and South American rabbits (Sylvilagus bachmani and Sylvilagus brasiliensis, respectively), where it causes only a benign infection. Like other poxviruses, MYXV contains several genes that encode host-related immunomodulatory proteins.
Using the MYXV-European rabbit/American rabbits interaction model and a combination of phylogenetic and functional approaches, I am currently studying the acting mechanisms of pathogen driven-evolution on susceptible/resistant hosts immunity factors and the molecular “arms race” interface between hosts and viral mimicry proteins.