Our Mission at ViDaB Lab:
- Exploring Diversity in Environmental Contexts: We are committed to comprehensively understanding plant and animal-associated virus diversity and ecology. Our aim is to unravel the intricate relationships between viruses and their hosts in various environmental settings, particularly focusing on coral reefs.
- Assessing Viral Roles in Ecosystem Health: A key aspect of our work is to determine the roles of viruses in different environmental contexts. We are particularly interested in assessing how viruses influence the health and disease of plants and animals, with a special focus on marine life.
- Advancing Bioinformatics in Virology: Developing innovative bioinformatics tools is at the heart of our research. These tools are designed to analyze and interpret complex patterns in virus sequencing data, enabling us to gain deeper insights into viral functions and interactions.
Our Core Focus Areas in Coral Reef Virology:
- Virus Discovery Initiatives: We continue our efforts in discovering new viruses, with a particular emphasis on RNA virus diversity in coral reefs. Our goal is to develop specific resources like a coral reef virus database and a PCR primer database tailored to these unique ecosystems.
- Characterizing Individual Virus Lineages: Our research includes the development of PCR primers and lineage-specific approaches for detecting viruses in meta’omics libraries and for amplicon sequencing. We’re also increasing our efforts in isolating virus-host pairs from marine holobionts, enriching our understanding of symbiotic relationships.
- Community Building and Management Tool Development: As leaders in this field, we aim to set standards and bring together researchers and practitioners to forge a unified approach to coral reef virology. Part of our mission includes developing practical virus tools for ecosystem management, such as phage therapy and diagnostic tools, to help safeguard and sustain marine environments.
Join us at ViDaB Lab as we embark on this exciting journey to unravel the mysteries of coral reef virology and develop innovative solutions for marine ecosystem management and conservation.