Each year, the Global One Health Academy funds an exceptional group of graduate students with One Health related research interests. During their one-year appointment, the Global One Health Fellows are offered many opportunities, such as professional development workshops, networking with One Health professionals and more! Learn more about Holly McInnes and how the Global One Health Fellowship helped support her important research on tomato spotted wilt virus and advance her professional career.
What do you research?
I research tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV)! It’s a plant pathogenic virus spread by an insect vector, thrips. It causes disease in many different plants of agricultural importance including pepper, potato, lettuce, peanut, cucurbits, and tomato and is considered one of the most economically important plant viruses in the world. More specifically, I study resistance breaking TSWV (RB-TSWV), which can evade resistance genes in tomato which are commonly used to manage TSWV in the field. I’m trying to understand how RB-TSWV emerged in North Carolina and if it has differential fitness in its plant and insect vector hosts. I am also using our RB isolates to screen new tomato material for resistance to RB-TSWV.
What are the implications of your research, and how does it fit into the One Health framework?
TSWV and other plant pathogens threaten global food security by limiting vegetable production and affecting plant nutrition. Investigating RB-TSWV fitness in its plant and insect hosts will give us insights into fundamental TSWV biology which is vital to understanding TSWV population dynamics, epidemiology, and host-virus interactions. In collaboration with NC State tomato breeder Dr. Reza Shekasteband, we are using modern breeding methods to identify and generate markers for new sources of stable TSWV resistance in tomato. By developing new TSWV resistance in tomato, we are working to combat TSWV epidemics exacerbated by climate change by providing stable, effective resistance to an infectious disease without relying on pesticides. By reducing TSWV-related losses and decreasing reliance on pesticides for disease management, we can make growing tomatoes more economical for the grower, increase food production, and reduce the amount of toxins released into the environment. Additionally, researching TSWV virus-vector interactions can help us understand other arthropod-vectored infectious diseases. TSWV is closely related to animal-infecting bunyaviruses such as Rift Valley Fever and La Crosse virus, which are serious pathogens of livestock and humans. Insights from the TSWV model system can translate to these dangerous pathogens. In short, this project has an impact on global food security by increasing our understanding of the epidemiology of an infectious plant disease and providing a defense against an emerging plant pathogen.
What/who inspired you to pursue this field of study?
Many facets contributed to my eventual pursuit of plant pathology, but overall my grandmother was the driving factor. My grandmother and her family were subsistence farmers during the Great Depression in Georgia. She would often tell me stories about how much they struggled to survive. She came to live with my family during my last two years of high school, at which point she insisted we cultivate a small garden for her. Under her keen supervision, we learned how to germinate seeds, prepare the garden bed, manage weeds, identify and remove insect pests, and harvest our crops. She gifted us with so much generational knowledge and imparted upon me how hard it is to cultivate the food we need to sustain us. When I was choosing my undergraduate major, I decided to pursue Plant Biology to better understand plants–these organisms that we as humans have a close connection to as sources of food, fiber, shelter, and medicine, but generally do not think about. I gained a further appreciation for plants during my undergraduate studies and decided to pursue plant pathology in graduate school because of the importance of protecting plants as integral parts of our environment as well as for preserving grower livelihoods and food security.
What do you view as a critical global challenge in One Health, and how could your discipline contribute to addressing it?
I think a critical One Health global challenge is climate change exacerbated range expansion of insects. Climate change and its associated higher temperatures allow insect vectors such as mosquitos, whiteflies, and thrips to move into previously uninhabited areas and generally increase the length of the reproduction period for these insects in their native habitats. This is important for human, animal, and plant health because insects often vector deadly diseases, and when environmental conditions are favorable for their spread and persistence, these diseases become more common and difficult to manage. In plant pathology, some of the most serious disease outbreaks are the result of an introduction of a non-native insect or microbial pathogen to a susceptible population of plants that have no natural defense against the introduced organism. We need increased monitoring for these insects so we can preemptively generate management protocols and health guidelines that will protect communities against the diseases these insects carry. We also need to foster collaborations with researchers in the insects’ native ranges to learn about vector spread, habits, disease epidemiology, intervention measures, and treatment. Plant pathologists are uniquely positioned to address insect vector range expansion as they often work with vector-borne plant diseases, collaborate with/are entomologists, and have access to historical records and data detailing the insect population makeup in their areas. Additionally, plant pathologists regularly work with grower groups, extension networks, industry professionals, government officials, international collaborators, and citizen scientists which gives them access to a powerful network of experts with diverse experiences and insights.
How has the Global One Health Fellowship helped shape your career trajectory?
I’ve always been interested in conducting collaborative research. I’ve learned through this fellowship that in order to make the connections necessary to start a collaboration, you have to start by getting out of your discipline bubble and learn about different research from your own. If you take time to learn things outside your field, you’ll learn not only new things, but also recognize knowledge gaps in your own field or things that your field could contribute to others. The One Health classes made me practice thinking through a more interdisciplinary lens and encouraged me to be more creative. At the same time, sharing my research with those outside my field was invigorating! It also helped me develop better communication skills as I adapted to talking about my research outside the realm of plant pathology and the biological sciences. Seeing things through a One Health lens helps put things in perspective, but also reminds you that your research is interconnected with and integral to countless other realms of study. Overall, this experience made the idea of cross-field collaboration not only attractive but also possible through the connections I made as a Fellow. Finally, I think I will be more likely to take chances on pursuing a job or training experience outside of academia and/or not directly related to my current field as a result of being a Global One Health Fellow.
What was your favorite part of the Global One Health Fellowship?
My favorite part of the Global One Health Fellowship was visiting the Center for Marine Sciences and Technology (CMAST)! Although I was familiar with several CALS research stations, I did not know that NC State had a research station devoted to the marine sciences or that we host the state’s largest marine mammal rescue program! With the research station in close proximity to the community it serves (the ocean, marine wildlife, and fisheries) it underscores the value of integrating/conducting research in close association with its stakeholders. Getting out of the lab and NC State’s main campus helps you put things in perspective–the research we conduct here at NC State has a huge impact on the greater community. There are so many possibilities for collaboration within the university system as well as with community and industry partners.
What are your next steps?
I plan to continue scouting for RB-TSWV in tomato across NC and help create an RB-TSWV scouting network for tomatoes and peppers in the southeast US. I also plan to collect more environmental data in areas of RB-TSWV emergence to better understand the conditions that foster the development of resistance breaking and see if we can generate better guidelines to preserve disease resistance genes. I would also like to look at the effect of increasing temperature (as predicted by climate change models) on the function of plant resistance genes, innate plant defenses to viral infection, and on virus vector behavior. Overall, I want to continue researching viral pathogens of plants and the role climate change has on virus-vector-plant interactions and disease dynamics.
Is there anything else you would like to share?
I highly encourage students from the agricultural disciplines to apply to the Global One Health Fellowship. Much of the One Health sphere is dominated by human and animal health representatives; however, in order to address core One Health issues like emerging infectious diseases, food and water scarcity, antimicrobial resistance, climate change, and environmental contamination we need more people at the table. We need perspectives from weed scientists, plant biologists, ecologists, entomologists, crop and soil scientists, horticulturalists, marine biologists, geologists, and more! We must get more plant and agriculture representation to reduce “plant blindness” and ensure that we include grower considerations in One Health discussions.
