Objective:
The objectives of this collaborative agreement are: 1. Advance our understanding of molecular epidemiology of FMD viruses in South America by increasing the number of fully sequenced virus strains from the region; 2. Develop algorithms and models that can predict with some confidence the epidemiologic features and transmission history of an FMD epidemic based on the changes nucleotide substitutions observed in the genomes of isolated viruses; 3. Identify sites of the FMD virus genome under positive selection and quantify any association between changes in those sites and epidemiological features of the outbreaks; 4. Expand the scope of FMD epidemiology to include other vesicular diseases such as vesicular stomatitis in selected regions of Latin-America and the use of epidemiological information in development and testing of predictive models of disease incursions into the U.S.

Approach:
The ARS-USDA PIADC FADRU will collaborate with the the CONICET, Argentina, and the Instituto de Biotecnología (INTA Castelar, Argentina) to: 1. Advance our understanding of molecular epidemiology of FMD viruses in South America by increasing the number of fully sequenced virus strains in the region; 2. Develop algorithms and models that can predict with some confidence the epidemiologic features and transmission history of an FMD epidemic based on the changes nucleotide substitutions observed in the genomes of isolated viruses; 3. Identify sites of the FMD virus genome under positive selection and quantify any association between changes in those sites and epidemiological features of the outbreaks; 4. Expand the scope of FMD epidemiology to include other vesicular diseases such as vesicular stomatitis in selected regions of Latin-America and the use of epidemiological information in development and testing of predictive models of disease incursions into the U.S.