Fractal Therapeutics Inc, Massachusetts, United States
Nothing in biology, as the famous quote goes, makes sense except in the light of evolution. The emergence of SARS-CoV-2 as a novel viral pathogen in humans has pushed the field of evolutionary theory off the pages of textbooks and into our daily lives.
At the same time, high-throughput genome sequencing and functional data has provided us with a detailed molecular characterization of an organism undergoing evolution at a scale that has never been seen before. The richness of the datasets, and the imminence of the threat, has presented an unprecedented opportunity for the study of evolutionary biology.
Over the past four years, we and our collaborators have used a cross-disciplinary approach linking evolutionary theory to epidemiology to identify potential risks and propose strategies to address these risks as the pandemic unfolded. For example, in 2020, we used a combination of high-throughput functional data and evolutionary modeling to predict that the virus would rapidly evolve to escape the immune response. Since then, we have continued to study the virus, linking immunology and epidemiology data to highlight risks and point out opportunities.
While many of the predictions made by us have unfortunately come to pass already, our work provides numerous practical insights for the design of next-generation biomedical interventions, such as vaccines, prophylactics, and treatments. At the same time, other groups working in this space have also devised promising tools that can be leveraged in the design of better interventions.
In this talk, we will first discuss the trajectory of the pandemic so far, pointing out the risks that were in fact predicted and the risks that remain at this point. We will then examine the toolbox that is available for biomedical researchers studying SARS-CoV-2, based on the application of evolutionary theory, phylogenetics, epidemiological modeling and machine learning to publicly available high-throughput datasets. Finally, we will explore the strategic implications of the work done by us and others.
SARS-CoV-2 remains an unprecedented threat to public health, as its rapid and ongoing evolution is capable of yielding further unpleasant surprises. At the same time, much can be done in a practical sense to mitigate these potential risks, particularly in the space of novel biomedical interventions. The application of bioinformatics and computational modeling to the rich datasets that now exist in the public domain provides an unprecedented opportunity for practical impact.
This talk will provide a ringside view of the science and real-world utility of evolutionary theory in the 21st century.