Around 2009 I realized that the international science community had never researched the genetic epidemiology of circulating viruses in my country of Palestine. That’s when I started focusing on applied research.

Applied research at my lab started with a research project funded by the DFG-German Research Council. That study focused on the outcome of a new vaccine on children born to HBV positive mothers.  I soon realized that nobody had investigated the circulating HBV genotypes among the Palestinian population. It had been assumed they were the same as those in surrounding countries. So, I began collecting HBV samples with the help of my students and also established a network with leading Palestinian physicians and hospitals.

At the same time, I had isolated Adenovirus from Palestinian children as part of an earlier project and had sequencing results waiting for analysis. My German partner in the DFG project advised me to buy DNASTAR software for my Virology lab. I purchased Lasergene in 2011 and my students and I started using MegAlign for sample analysis.

What are some of your research findings?

Scientific reports on infectious pathogens in the Palestinian population are rare. Genetic epidemiology data presented by my research contribute to the worldwide efforts to understand the epidemiology, distribution, and evolution of viruses. One of the goals of my research was to establish a database for a wide range of different viral genotypes. This database would be extremely useful as a public health tool for managing possible outbreaks and for designing vaccines for Palestine and the surrounding region.

For instance, after creating phylogenetic trees using DNASTAR’s MegAlign Pro, we discovered that some viral sequences isolated from Palestinians residing in Palestine had a high similarity with viral isolates from the USA, Mexico, or Thailand. Even before the emergence of COVID-19, this emphasized to us that viruses know no borders.

In case of the influenza A publication (Bakri et. al., 2019), a major finding was that while genetic properties of Palestinian A(H3N2) and A(H1N1)pdm09 were in line with global isolates, A(H3N2), the dominant subtype in the northern hemisphere, was not dominant in Palestine. In addition,  A(H1N1)pdm09 prevalence did not match World Health Organization findings for neighboring countries in the Middle East. We used both NCBI- and GISAID-archived influenza A sequences to place the Palestinian sequences into perspective. Some of our sequences showed higher percent identity with isolates from the USA than with other regional isolates.

Our research on HCV genotypes in Palestine (Rayan Da’as and Azzeh, 2019) showed a mix of regional influences rather than a single dominant genotype.

What are the benefits to using Lasergene for your analyses?

We do genetic epidemiology and genetic characterization of viral isolates, so we compare what we collect in Palestine with isolates from different parts of the world.

Since 2011, our research has centered on the genetic epidemiology of viruses circulating among Palestinians, and Lasergene has remained our primary analysis tool. My laboratory performed genotyping and mutation analysis of different viruses circulating in Palestine, Adenovirus (Qurei et al., 2012), HBV (Abdelnabi et al. 2014), influenza A (Bakri et al., 2019) and HCV (Rayan Da’as and Azzeh, 2019). One student has studied the genetic epidemiology of H. pylori (not yet published).

While our lab was originally learning to use MegAlign, I contacted Brian Anderson at DNASTAR several times for technical support issues or workflow questions and found him to be very helpful. On a few occasions, I was directed to Eric Ma for additional support. Later on, Brian Anderson was extremely generous and supportive, especially when I ran into a very difficult situation and needed to access Lasergene from a secondary location.

I briefly tried other options but stayed with DNASTAR because we found it more user-friendly than the alternatives. (N.B. See a selection of Maysa’s publications using MegAlign Pro below.)