Swine Health Blackbelt #12 - Dr. Mariana Kikuti: PRRSV 1C variant - Will it stick around?

PRRS virus continues to create new variants, what a surprise… However, as unfortunate as it is, we need to tract the spread and transmission of these new variants to best keep our herds healthy. In this episode, Dr. Clayton Johnson talks with Dr. Mariana Kikuti about her work tracking a novel PRRSV 1C variant across many farms in the Midwest and what its presence could mean for many farms in the US.

Meet the guest: 

Dr. Mariana Kikuti is a veterinary doctor with a Masters of public health and a Ph.D. in epidemiology. Currently, she is a Researcher at the University of Minnesota. Her research interests focus on epidemiology of emerging and infectious diseases. Her current work involves mainly curating a PRRSV sequence library and using molecular epidemiology approaches to investigate patterns of disease transmission and viral evolution.