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EU funding (€2,000,000): Leveraging the zombie-making strategies of Ophiocordyceps fungi to understand animal behaviour Hor26 Jan 2024 EU Research and Innovation programme "Horizon"
Overview
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Leveraging the zombie-making strategies of Ophiocordyceps fungi to understand animal behaviour
Reminiscent of zombies in pop culture, some parasites hijack host behaviours. Our understanding of this parasite strategy to improve transmission is minimal, despite its convergent evolution across major taxa. Functional genetics studies would advance our knowledge of the molecular underpinnings of “zombie behaviour”. Additionally, learning how behaviour can be altered would elucidate how “normal” phenotypes are maintained. However, most zombie-making parasites and their hosts are not classic model organisms, which complicates mechanistic interrogation. The so-called “zombie ants’ can be used to study parasite hijacking of animal behaviour in more detail. Zombie ants are infected by Ophiocordyceps fungi that cause summit disease. Infected ants ascend vegetation that they bite into as they die to ensure fungal spore dispersal. My lab developed fungal culturing techniques, infection methods and behavioural assays to detail infection-related changes in daily ant foraging, communication, and locomotion. Additionally, by integrating multi-omics tools, we identified candidate fungal products and ant host pathways that might underlie the behavioural changes observed. However, to move from correlation to causation these candidates need to be functionally tested. By leveraging my lab’s pioneering work and my training in molecular microbiology I aim to elucidate the molecular genetics underlying parasite hijacking of host behaviour. I propose to 1) adopt molecular genetics tools to characterise fungal products that induce altered host behavioural phenotypes, 2) use RNASeq and RNAi to investigate the affected ant pathways that give rise to those phenotypes, and 3) further establish involvement of these behavioural pathways through integration of the animal model Drosophila melanogaster. The proposed work will be transformative in our understanding of parasite manipulation strategies and spark novel research into sustainable pest control strategies and fungus-derived drugs.
Funded Companies:
| Company name | Funding amount |
| Universiteit Utrecht | €2,000,000 |
Source: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101124277
The filing refers to a past date, and does not necessarily reflect the current state. The latest known state is available on the following page: Universiteit Utrecht, Utrecht, Netherlands.