Question

d) RESEARCH ON THE APPLICATION OF PHYLOGENY in Medicine. Write a 2-3 page research paper using at least 3 scientific papers/articles on the application of phylogeny in developing medical treatment for a named virus or parasite that has impacted populations.

Paper should also include:

a) Name of the virus/parasite and disease or infection caused.

b) Source of the disease or infection eg vectors

c) Explain the symptoms of the disease/infection caused by the virus/parasite

d) Diagnosis and Prognosis

e) Example(s) of how phylogeny is utilized in treating the disease/infection.

Answer 1

The study of the evolutionary relationships among groups of organisms and the genes they maintain is called phylogeny. It is also known as a tree, and important because it heps in understanding of how genes, genomes, species evolve.

Uses of Phylogeny in Medicine: Phylogeny can be used in identifying the origin of pathogens, how pathogen outbreak happens, which species the pathogen is related to and the source of transmission. Researchers can locate the ancestral viral populations prior to their spread into the locations, the primary source of the virus etc.

An example is the emergence of pandemic H1N1 influenza( swine flu) in 2009. Genetic analysis of the pandemic H1N1 included phylogeographic analyses that studied the global dispersal of the virus during its establishment phase. The H1N1 in humans is due to transfer of Swine Influenza Virus from pig to human.

In order to find out the origin of this novel virus, researchers had taken 42 nucleocapsid sequences of H1N1 viruses of different origins to construct a tree. A phylogenetic analysis of these sequences was performed along with bootstrap analysis of 100 replicates. The result shows that Indian H1N1 strain has the highest homolog of 98.19% with Iowa H1N1 strain Further the H1N1 strains analyzed using NP sequences of different Indian origins showed highly close sequence similarity. Therefore, this study is useful for knowing the taxonomy and evolution of influenza viruses.