Harshit Kumar Prajapati
I am Harshit Kumar Prajapati, from India. I have obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Biotechnology from the University of Rajasthan, Jaipur. By the end of the course, I decided to enhance and widen my skillset in Biotechnology with a fusion of Bioinformatics, which led me to pursue a combined M.Sc. course in the same, at IBAB, Bangalore. After my master’s, due to my keen interest in virology, I joined the HIV-AIDS laboratory, JNCASR, Bangalore, as a project assistant. There, I worked with patient samples, to address questions related to the identification, emergence, and evolution of viral quasi-species, and the effect of small molecules on such variants. I wanted to continue with this amalgamation of Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, which led me to the perfect Ph.D. program – VIROINF.
As the ESR:4, I will study the “Experimental evolution of Deformed wing virus in bees (Apis mellifera)”, under the supervision of Prof. Dino McMahon. In our labs at the Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung (BAM), I will be investigating the role of transmission and recombination on the adaptation of viral virulence, and how these changes in virulence, during experimental evolution, affect host immune responses.
In my free time, I’m mostly occupied with video games (strategic), but I am always up for get-togethers and outings. Swimming and music are my key stress busters.
Field:
Virology
Host institution:
Free University of Berlin (FU Berlin), Germany
Local supervisor:
Prof. Dr. Dino McMahon (FU Berlin and BAM Berlin)
Local co-supervisor:
Prof. Dr. Bernhard Renard (FU Berlin and HPI Potsdam)
Project partners:
Lara Fuhrmann (ESR 3)
Liuwei Wang (ESR 8)
Work packages:
WP 1.3 Virus-host interactions
WP 2.1 Microevolution: Virus quasispecies
WP 2.2 Macroevolution: Natural selection of viruses
Project description
This project seeks to understand the evolution and impact of virus virulence. The honeybee virus Deformed wing virus (DWV) is an emerging pathogen that is responsible for widespread declines of honeybees in the Northern hemisphere. The impact of the virus has been exacerbated by the arrival of an ectoparasitic mite: Varroa destructor, which can vector the virus.
In this project, we have the following objectives:
- Carry out in vivo evolution experiments of viruses by serially passaging DWV in the honey bee, Apis mellifera, to investigate the role of transmission and recombination on virus virulence adaptation.
- Analyze and compare the transcriptional responses in hosts to experimentally evolved viruses. We will focus on up-regulation of RNAi machinery and candidate pathways in canonical insect immune pathways, e.g. Toll pathway, to understand how changes in virulence associated with experimental evolution affect host immune response. This will be done in collaboration with ESR 9.
- Measure viral phenotypes (virus growth, mortality, host transcriptional responses) (N=4 treatments, each consisting of 10 serial passages, and N=5 replicate lines per treatment), for genotype/phenotype mapping to be carried out by ESR 8. This will enable us to understand how transmission and recombination impact DWV virulence evolution at the genotypic level.
We will carry out bioinformatic analyses in collaboration with ESR 8, ESR 3 and Allgenetics to develop methods of identifying evolving and co-evolving sites and epistatic interactions across viral genomes. Together, our study will help to understand the evolutionary drivers of virus spread and damage in bee hosts that are of major economic and ecological importance.
Presentations
Experimental evolution of Deformed Wing Virus in developing honeybees (Apis mellifera) Presentation
Poster at Ecological immunology workshop 2022: Resistance, tolerance & symbionts, 07.09.2022.