Timing is everything – the within and between host evolutionary dynamics of seasonal influenza viruses (ID Epi Seminar Series)

Presented by Dr. Colin Russell, Professor of Applied Evolutionary Biology at the Amsterdam University Medical Center. Register for the event here.

Dr. Russell’s research is driven by his desire to understand how viruses evolve so that we can design better intervention strategies to combat them. His previous work has uncovered the global dynamics of seasonal influenza viruses showing that A/H3N2 viruses spread globally from E&SE Asia each year (Science 2008) and how rates of virus evolution fundamentally alter these dynamics (Nature 2015). He has worked extensively on the predictability of influenza virus evolution (eLife 2014, PNAS 2016), on the antigenic evolution of the influenza virus neuraminidase (PNAS 2011), on how within-host virus evolutionary dynamics dictate the probabilities of new variant emergence (Science 2012), and on how antibody-mediated immunity evolves with each influenza virus infection (Science 2014).

Dr. Russell completed his BSc in biology at Emory University, USA in 2001. He studied for his PhD as a Gates Scholar at the University of Cambridge completing in 2006. He remained at Cambridge until 2017: first as a postdoctoral researcher (2006-2008), then as a Junior Research Fellow (2008-2009), then as a group leader and Royal Society University Research Fellow (2009-2017). From 2008-2011, he was a visiting Research Fellow at the Fogarty International Center of the US National Institutes of Health. In 2017, he moved to the AUMC as full Professor to head the new research section of Applied Evolutionary Biology within the Department of Medical Microbiology. He is also the chair of the Infection Program of the Amsterdam Infection and Immunity Institute.

Recommended readings:

• Morris DH, Petrova VN, Rossine FW, Parker E, Grenfell BT, Neher RA, Levin SA, Russell CA. Asynchrony between virus diversity and antibody selection limits influenza virus evolution. Elife. 2020 Nov 11;9:e62105. doi: 10.7554/eLife.62105. PMID: 33174838; PMCID: PMC7748417.
• Petrova VN, Russell CA. The evolution of seasonal influenza viruses. Nat Rev Microbiol. 2018 Jan;16(1):47-60. doi: 10.1038/nrmicro.2017.118. Epub 2017 Oct 30. Erratum in: Nat Rev Microbiol. 2017 Nov 07. PMID: 29081496.