The first time Ebola was announced as a disease, people were oblivious to the idea that it could kill a person. Nobody thought it was that scary in the beginning. To really find out if Ebola was life threatening, a team of highly trained scientists came in to answer this question. The head of this group was Pardis Sabeti, who is an assistant professor of evolutionary and organismic biology at Harvard University. Dr. Sabeti studies the evolution and effects of infectious diseases and their effect towards the genetic genome (“Awardee Profile”). When the news of Ebola first came about, Sabeti combed through the human genome looking for answers of what the disease was until she got them (“NG Live!”). This work …show more content…
Sabeti and the team made a major breakthrough in the investigation of the Ebola virus. “Pardis and her team were able to work out clearly that the virus was spreading human to human—not from mosquito bites or some pig vector or something else.” Sabeti and her crew found out how the virus was being passed, and this proved to be influential to scientists, and even doctors. Even though many rumors were out in the world saying mosquitoes or vectors were the cause, only Sabeti’s work really proves the information true. This was an instrumental piece of evidence that was needed to do continue the investigation of the disease. The Ebola virus is also quite infectious and very easy to spread. “One common route of entry is thought to be the wet membrane on the inner surface of the eyelid, which a person might touch with a contaminated fingertip.” It is passed through sweat, tears, or any wet membrane from person to person. With this research and knowledge, Dr. Sabeti could clearly come to a solution on how Ebola spreads. This helped the team learn what they had to do to test on patients, and to further their knowledge on how it could have started. This work was only done by Sabeti, and it really helped doctors everywhere to treat patients