My vision is to predict an epidemic before it breaks out, by studying the jumps of viruses from animals to humans

This is how Dr. Adi Stern describes, who completed a doctorate at Tel Aviv University and a post-doctorate at the Weizmann Institute, one of the winners of the UNESCO-L'Oréal Prize for Women in Science who is moving on to a post-doctorate at Berkeley

In about a month, Dr. Adi Stern will travel to the University of Berkeley to investigate, in a unique collaboration between laboratories at Berkeley and UCSF, the subject of the transfer of viruses from animals to humans.
Dr. Stern is one of the three winners of the UNESCO-L'Oréal Prize for Women in Science for 2011. Two years ago she completed her doctorate with Prof. Tal Popko at Tel Aviv University, where she studied the evolution of viruses. She is currently completing her first postdoctoral period in the laboratory of Dr. Rotem Sorek at the Weizmann Institute - where she studies viruses that prey on bacteria, known as bacteriophages. "The common denominator in all the studies so far has been the relationship between pathogens - the causes of the disease and their hosts, i.e. those who catch the disease," explains Dr. Stern.

In the laboratory of Prof. Raul Andino from USCF and Prof. Rasmus Nielsen, from Berkeley, she will examine the jump of viruses between animals and humans: "The famous examples of such jumps were swine flu, bird flu and HIV - a virus that jumped from monkeys to humans. These jumps are very dangerous because they have the potential to produce epidemics, because our immune system does not recognize this virus. Viral diseases can be schematically divided into those that the immune system has known for many years, and those that have made the "jump" from animals to humans. In the case of "ancient" viruses, the person and the virus live together for hundreds, thousands or millions of years of evolution and then the immune system usually knows how to cope. This is called co-evolution. "

"When a jump is made. The jump is characterized by a series of mutations that apply to the DNA or the RNA of the virus (depending on the type of virus). My goal is to investigate what changes are required from a virus in order to make such a jump and deal with them. My vision is to identify a viral epidemic that breaks out in animals and understand when it might affect humans and thus prevent an epidemic before it happens. To be able to carry out such research I want to study the past examples, what happened to the viruses that made this leap, understand what changes are required and learn how to predict them."

"One of the characteristics that are recognized today is RNA viruses, and the reason for this is that these are viruses with a very high mutation rate, which allows them to change and potentially facilitates the transition from animal to animal."