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“We’re all in the same boat,” says Liza Rosenbaum Nielsen. “The health of wildlife, livestock, humans and plants is more intertwined than most of us realize.” Rosenbaum Nielsen is professor of preventive veterinary medicine at the University of Copenhagen and a member of the advisory board of UZH’s One Health Institute.
She is one of the experts who will speak at the institute’s inaugural symposium on 21 September and explain why One Health research is necessary: “Humans tend to dominate everything without regard for other species and ecosystems,” she says. This dominance leads to many problems for the environment and for health – of both humans and animals. “The holistic approach of One Health can address these issues.”
The Danish professor welcomes UZH’s initiative and believes the emerging institute will become a well-regarded pioneer in the field. As we reported earlier this year, in summer 2023, UZH became the first European university to establish a One Health Institute.
The comprehensive goals of One Health as described by Rosenbaum Nielsen constitute long-term tasks. The job at hand for now is to develop and expand the institute. Specifically, the 21 September inaugural symposium will highlight and promote two key areas: evolution and epidemiology. As Thomas Lutz, professor of veterinary physiology and head of the One Health Institute steering committee, explains, these two broad areas encompass cross-cutting themes relevant to the entire field of One Health.
In terms of content, the institute will initially focus on the three main topics of zoonoses, drug resistance and metabolic diseases. These topics reflect the expertise of the three host faculties (Vetsuisse, the Faculty of Medicine and the Faculty of Science). The institute’s leadership team has advertised two assistant professorships in the core fields of evolution and epidemiology. At next week’s symposium (which is open to the public), selected candidates will outline their research in these areas.
Paleogenetics, a branch of genetics in which centuries-old tissue samples are analyzed to open a window into the past, provides a prime example of why evolution is an important topic in One Health. The Nobel Prize awarded to Svante Pääbo in 2022 for decoding the Neanderthal genome brought the discipline to the attention of a wider audience. “We can use paleogenetics to reconstruct the evolutionary trajectories of zoonotic diseases and identify old pathogen reservoirs,” says Verena Schünemann, professor of paleogenetics at the UZH Institute of Evolutionary Medicine.
Schünemann has researched a whole series of significant pathogens that are transmitted from animals to humans and have caused millions of deaths. For example, Yersinia pestis, the pathogen that causes the plague. Studies of old samples from the Middle Ages revealed where the dangerous pathogen originally jumped to humans and led to deadly epidemics. “Looking at the major pandemics of the past as well as local epidemics and their causes helps us better understand how epidemics develop,” says Schünemann.
By analyzing the genetic differences of the various strains, scientists can assess the potential for evolutionary changes in the pathogen and thus draw conclusions about the hazard potential. The plague pathogen is still far from being eradicated and continues to cause outbreaks, especially in Africa.
Stefan Stöcklin
