Leveraging mosquito antiviral immunity to gain insights into arbovirus transmission dynamics

Miguel Antonio García Knight

at Institute for Biomedical Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico

Short Bio:

Dr Miguel Antonio García Knight is a principal investigator at the Institute for Biomedical Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and an International Fellow at the Sanger Institute. His lab studies host-pathogen interactions of emergent and re-emergent RNA viruses relevant to Latin America and East Africa. Miguel’s lab studies host-pathogen interactions of emergent and re-emergent RNA viruses relevant to Latin America and East Africa. He employs a wide range of approaches to understand how pathogens enter human and animal populations, how they interact with host immune systems and the mechanisms through which these processes can result in pathology. He is particularly interested in understanding how insects interact with the viruses they encounter and how some have evolved to serve as viral vectors. Much of his work is also focused on capacity building activities in genomics and pandemic preparedness in Latin America and East Africa. Dr García Knight obtained his BSc degree at the University of Edinburgh and his DPhil from the University of Oxford in conjunction with the KEMRI-Wellcome Research Programme in Kilifi, Kenya, where he studied infant immunology and HIV-1. He then returned to Mexico, where he grew up, and worked at the Autonomous University of Puebla, studying arbovirus vaccinology and then at the University of California San Francisco as a UCMEXUS postdoctoral fellow, studying mechanisms of adaptive antiviral immunity in flies and mosquitoes. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he worked on a range of pandemic response studies focusing on clinical virology, epidemiology, immunology and phylogenetics.