Artem Baidaliuk

After PhD project on interactions between an insect-specific virus, its host Aedes aegypti and arboviruses, I am working on several projects that focus on understanding viromes of mosquitoes and vertebrate wildlife. Describing the viruses of mosquito and vertebrate wildlife species, understudied in that regard, provides better understanding of evolution and host range for various virus groups. Additionally, mosquito viromes may directly or indirectly influence arbovirus transmission, while virus discovery and/or detection in vertebrate wildlife contributes to spillover risk estimation as well as wildlife conservation. Since many of the emergent viruses are arboviruses, both lines of research partly converge on a quest to enrich our knowledge on arbovirus transmission systems in the wild using untargeted viral metagenomics tools.