Erik Volz: Mathematical models for pathogen gene genealogies

Abstract: The genetic diversity of many pathogens is shaped by epidemiological history. But, the dynamics of infectious disease epidemics differ in important ways from demographic processes that have traditionally been studied by population geneticists. In many epidemics, the population size and birth rate changes rapidly in a nonlinear fashion through time. Mathematical models for describing infectious disease dynamics have a long history that has run parallel to the development of modern population genetics, but until recently, there has been little communication between these fields.Interest has grown in developing a new set of mathematical models for genealogies generated by epidemic processes. These methods reveal how the effective population size of a pathogen depends on transmission rates, the number of infected hosts, and the size of the bottleneck at the time of transmission. These mathematical models have also enabled new applications of pathogen genetic data to public health. Pathogen genetic data can be informative about epidemic processes in ways that standard surveillance data are not, especially regarding the source of infections and risk factors for transmission. I will review several approaches to mathematical modeling of pathogen genealogies.