Confronting Ebola with computers.

• Position: Infectious Disease

Roughly 20,000 Ebola virus disease cases in western Africa led to more than 8,000 deaths in 2014. To help track and treat the disease--and potentially other viruses--in the future, researchers across disciplines at the University of Idaho, Moscow, have formed the Ebola Working Group, which Is a subset of the university's newly formed Collaboratorium for Modeling Complex Problems. It is tackling two projects designed to better understand Ebola and how it spreads.

The first, led by associate physics professor Marty Ytreberg, uses computer models to determine the implications of ongoing and possible future evolution in Ebola. These models could assist In evaluating vaccine effectiveness and help health officials be on the lookout for dangerous mutations.

Vaccine makers use proteins from the Ebola virus to elicit an immune response--the production of antibodies. However, vaccines are being developed using an Ebola strain that caused outbreaks beginning in 1976. The team's model will provide a framework to analyze viral mutations and their effects in real-time. "We want to be in a position so that, as new data comes in, we'll be able to very quickly throw that into our models and see how the proteins will be impacted," explains Ytreberg.

The project also will evaluate the same proteins to see what future evolution could occur. The team hopes to identify potential mutations that significantly could disrupt how well a vaccine works, as well as reduce the natural immunity gained by people who have had the disease in the past. These mutations could be put on...