Journal
NATURE REVIEWS MICROBIOLOGY
Volume 15, Issue 8, Pages 502-510Publisher
NATURE PORTFOLIO
DOI: 10.1038/nrmicro.2017.45
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Categories
Funding
- Commonwealth of Australia
- State of New South Wales under the National Hendra Virus Research Program, awarded through the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation
- State of Queensland under the National Hendra Virus Research Program, awarded through the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation
- US National Institutes of General Medical Sciences IDeA Program [P20GM103474, P30GM110732]
- P. Thye, the Morris Animal Foundation
- Montana University System Research Initiative [51040-MUSRI2015-03]
- Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Young Faculty Award
- US Department of Defense Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP) [RC-2633]
- US National Science Foundation (NSF) [OCE-1335657, DEB-1557022]
- US Department of Defense SERDP [RC-2635]
- RAPIDD program of the Science & Technology Directorate of the Department of Homeland Security
- Fogarty International Center (part of the US National Institutes of Health)
- IDEAS (Infectious Disease Evolution Across Scales)
- US National Science Foundation [DEB-1354890]
- Direct For Biological Sciences
- Division Of Environmental Biology [1354890] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Division Of Ocean Sciences
- Directorate For Geosciences [1335657] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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Zoonotic spillover, which is the transmission of a pathogen from a vertebrate animal to a human, presents a global public health burden but is a poorly understood phenomenon. Zoonotic spillover requires several factors to align, including the ecological, epidemiological and behavioural determinants of pathogen exposure, and the within-human factors that affect susceptibility to infection. In this Opinion article, we propose a synthetic framework for animal-to-human transmission that integrates the relevant mechanisms. This framework reveals that all zoonotic pathogens must overcome a hierarchical series of barriers to cause spillover infections in humans. Understanding how these barriers are functionally and quantitatively linked, and how they interact in space and time, will substantially improve our ability to predict or prevent spillover events. This work provides a foundation for transdisciplinary investigation of spillover and synthetic theory on zoonotic transmission.
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