Sequencing and simulation for malaria genomic epidemiology

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Talk abstract:

The future of malaria control will involve the increased utilisation of genomic technologies. These technologies will aid disease control directly – for example, by enabling the surveillance of antimalarial drug resistance and transmission intensity – while also generating biological and evolutionary information on an unprecedented scale. Yet, realising this future will require addressing at least two critical challenges. First, technologies for the collection of malaria genomic data must be deployable in malaria endemic countries. To this end, I will describe the development of a nanopore based approach for flexible and affordable in-country malaria sequencing. Second, once data is collected, modelling frameworks must exist to link genomic information to epidemiological processes. Here, I will discuss a novel simulation that integrates both parasite evolution and epidemiology into a single unified system. Throughout the talk, I will highlight how a deeper understanding of malaria parasite biology would aid these efforts – and could also result from them.