The VIRTIGATION Advisory Board is a new project body tasked with providing strategic recommendations to better guide research & innovation efforts. Following its establishment at the last annual meeting in Israel, it is now time to introduce its members. Meet Darren Martin, Associate Professor in Computational Biology at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, in the first instalment of our new series “#Meet the VIRTIGATION Advisory Board Members”.
A world-renowned expert in virus genome analysis and bioinformatics
Darren Martin’s main research interests lie in studying the role that genetic recombination plays during virus evolution. Using computational recombination-analysis tools developed at the IDM, his group are searching for recombination hot- and cold-spots within the genomes of all currently described virus families. With a focus on combining computational and wet-lab experimental approaches, Martin’s group tests hypothesis relating to genetic recombination, the evolution of genome-scale secondary structures and fitness trad-offs. For example, Darren Martin’s group has shown that obligatory maintenance of the delicate network of co-evolved intra-genomic interactions that define the biology of virus species, severely limits the types of recombination events that are tolerable in nature. By demarcating the sub-genome modules that are and are not tolerably exchanged between viruses, recombination hot and cold spot maps should be applicable to the rational design of “recombination resistant” vaccines and drugs against viruses such as HIV and Hepatitis C.
"Plant viruses are my passion"
On the sidelines of the VIRTIGATION annual meeting in Israel, Darren Martin sat down with VIRTIGATION to share his insights on plant viruses, and why he joined the project as member of its Advisory Board.
Darren, you recently joined the VIRTIGATION Advisory Board as a member. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your scientific background?
I’m a computational biologist from South Africa. I’ve been working on plant viruses for the past 30 years, as sort of a hobby actually which I really like doing. While I work with a lot of different viruses, ranging from fungi, animal to human viruses, plant viruses are my passion.
What do you focus on as expert for virus genome analysis and bioinformatics?
The main focus of my work is on the analysis of virus genome sequence data. I look at things like genetic recombination, patterns of natural selection, and the roots of dissemination of viruses across continents.
VIRTIGATION focuses on begomo- and tobamoviruses like ToLCNDV, TYLCV and ToBRFV. What is your interest in these plant viruses?
So this is a natural fit with viruses like geminiviruses for example. Geminiviruses also form these disease complexes, which are quite similar to the disease complexes analysed by VIRTIGATION. The main difference however is that this project looks at viruses coming from completely different virus families. This is inherently fascinating, as it is the possible indication of a new, developing interaction between viruses that may become ecologically stable in the future. Catching these things as they happen is really interesting from an evolutionary perspective. And that is my main interest in a project like VIRTIGATION, this evolutionary perspective, how stable these synergisms remain between these viruses.
"The idea that viruses are always pathogens & bad is completely wrong"
Can you elaborate a bit further on this evolutionary perspective as concerns virus interactions?
So I get asked this question a lot. The patterns of evolution that yield viruses that interact with one another ecologically in a stable way, are the same patterns of evolution that yield for example interactions between animal viruses. The stability of these interactions has to happen using the same rules, no matter what the viruses infect. There’s game theory and this whole idea that for me to win, someone else must lose, also known as zero-sum type thinking. All of those dynamics are at play, no matter what group of viruses you are looking at. Two viruses infecting the same host – is one virus going to take everything for itself, or are they going to help each other? It is not zero-sum. And this applies even from the perspective of the host. Maybe the host is better off with a synergistic virus interaction, than with each of these individual viruses infecting it. As a stable state is reached after viruses have evolved into this disease complex, the host population will also reach a stable state in relation to this disease complex. It might be then actually better off afterwards than it was before the virus disease complex emerged.
The idea that viruses are always pathogens and always bad is completely wrong. Most viruses aren’t pathogens. Most viruses actually don’t harm their host on purpose. We have actually no idea what the Earth’s environment would be like without plant viruses. I strongly suspect that it would be far worse off without viruses, than with viruses.
"My main interest in VIRTIGATION lies in its multi-disciplinary approach"
As member of the VIRTIGATION Advisory Board, what is your interest in working with the project?
My main interest in working with VIRTIGATION is its multi-disciplinary approach to doing things. In VIRTIGATION, you have experts on insects transmission, viral pathogenesis or virus evolution. You have experts on all these things and as you bring them together, the sum of these parts is far more than what these experts could have done individually. I really enjoy seeing how such projects come together and progress.
What contributions would you expect from VIRTIGATION at the end of its lifetime?
Well, with all of these projects like VIRTIGATION, you are not going to come out at the end with saying “the problem is solved”. As many new questions will emerge as questions get answered. Solutions will be produced for sure, but these solutions will probably only be temporary. The viruses are going to evolve to deal with those solutions. A project like VIRTIGATION may come up with novel ways to mitigate these viruses, such as with transgenic resistance, or inoculating with a milder strain to protect from more severe strains. However, the viruses will evolve to work around these solutions. So the solutions are not permanent, but the knowledge gained to produce such solutions can then be applied to the next round of improvements, and not just in this area.
All of these approaches that are used to answer these questions, can be applied in any setting. What is actually more important than the actual outcome, is the journey to get to that outcome. And the more often you do this, the journey to get to these outcomes gets shorter and shorter and shorter, every time someone goes through that. Just to give you an example: in the COVID-19 pandemic, we were able to produce vaccines within a year. This is because people before that had gone through that journey to produce vaccines. All this not only applies to how we learn to deal with human viruses, but also with all other types of viruses, including of course plant viruses.
- Read more about Darren Martin’s research and scientific publications on Google Scholar
- Darren Martin is currently listed by Clarivate Analytics among the most cited researchers in the world, and played a key role in identifying the SARS-CoV2 Omicron variant
- The University of Cape Town regularly ranks as best University in Africa
