Tanaka Lab

Left to right: Mark, Fabio, Pen, Checks, Ali, Shamin.

We are interested in understanding evolution in host-pathogen systems by developing mathematical models and statistical methods for analysing data. A particular focus of our research has been to draw inferences about the transmission and mutation of infectious diseases from molecular epidemiological data. For example, spoligotyping is a genotyping method for studying the bacterium responsible for tuberculosis; we aim to extract information about the transmission of tuberculosis from spoligotypes. See also spolTools, a website we developed for analysing and visualising spoligotypes. We are also interested in fundamental questions about pathogens and their hosts, such as the evolution of life-history traits in viruses and the evolvability of immunoglobulin sequences. Our research is supported in part by a Discovery Grant from the Australian Research Council.

• We welcome Dr Frank Valckenborgh to our lab. Frank will be working with us until the end of this year, on modelling infectious disease dynamics and evolution.

• We welcome Cuong Tran to our lab. Cuong is a research assistant working with us in collaboration with Yanan Fan, Scott Sisson and Andrew Francis.

• Dr Mike Gilchrist from the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee visited our group for a few weeks in May 2008. We enjoyed his visit!



Pen, Ali, Mike (visiting from Tennessee), Mark, Sara, Carmen, Fabio.

• We welcome Zach Aandahl, Sara Ballouz and Carmen Chan to our research group.