Work Package 1 at the Leibniz Lab for Pandemic Preparedness

Focus on the ‘human-animal interface’

At the Leibniz Lab for Pandemic Preparedness, the ‘Human-Animal Interface’ research focus examines the complex interactions between animals, humans and pathogens in a changing environment. In intact ecosystems, there is a balance between the species present, and they regulate one another. Changes to these ecosystems, such as those caused by climate change or the destruction of habitats, have a direct impact on this balance. This also applies to pathogens. Such disruptions therefore create the potential for the emergence and spread of pandemics.

Pathogen diversity across space and time

In Work Package 1, led by LIB, big data initiatives in biodiversity research (LIB, SGN, DSMZ, IGB) are being brought into synergy with transdisciplinary expertise in pathogens and infections (BNITM, IZW, IfW, FZB, IPHT). In particular, the strengths of the Leibniz Institutes engaged in biodiversity research (LIB, DSMZ, SGN, IGB, IZW) and their respective collections provide a unique opportunity to record pathogen diversity in sequence data generated for a wide variety of purposes in an agnostic manner, to compare this with existing pathogen databases, and thereby to track selected pathogens in space and time.