Natural History of SIVcpz

For several years I have collaborated with Dr. Beatrice Hahn’s laboratory at the University of Alabama Birmingham to study lentiviruses in wild chimpanzees. This involves field collection of urine and fecal samples from primates at multiple sites across Africa for viral screening. Initial work done in Dr. Hahn’s laboratory indicates that HIV1, the virus responsible for the global AIDS pandemic, originated from a chimpanzee to human cross-species transmission in West Africa, probably through the bushmeat trade. The current project has several goals:
 

• To determine the prevalence and genetic diversity of SIVcpz in wild chimpanzee communities throughout equatorial Africa.
• To molecularly characterize major SIVcpz lineages infecting wild chimpanzee populations. 
• To study the natural history of SIVcpz infection in wild chimpanzees.
• To determine whether chimpanzees acquire additional SIV infections through hunting and predation of smaller monkeys.