Whole genome sequencing and phylodynamics on tickborne disease pathogens in Canada

Funding period: 2023–2025
Lead: Heather Coatsworth
Total GRDI funding: $720,400

The risk of tickborne disease risk is increasing worldwide due to climatic and environmental changes because of climate change. This project will create a tickborne disease target enrichment panel for tickborne disease pathogen sequencing projects. The team is also creating a bank of whole genome sequences from a variety of sample sources, creating open access sequence data that can be accessed by researchers, clinicians and assay developers. Benefits from this work could include updated diagnostic tests to better detect the breadth and evolving nature of these strains as well as the creation of tests to differentiate between pathogenic and non-pathogenic strains in humans.

This project will generate knowledge about when and how these tickborne pathogens were introduced and subsequently expanded within Canada, which can help us predict further invasion and expansion events and manage risk for these tickborne diseases in specific areas of interest. Furthermore, these data can be used in practice to rank appropriate intervention measures by priority, i.e. animal-based interventions in areas with high pathogen burden in reservoir hosts versus human protective measures in areas with high human pathogen burden.