Collage of three images: Woman in lab coat (Julia Bergholm, SLU), tools in laboratory and calves in Ethiopia.
Photos by Lisa Chröisty and Julia Bergholm

Between Ethiopia and Sweden: New virus discovered in project for a united world

Page reviewed:  01/08/2025

Viruses may be small, but they can cause huge problems on a global scale. PhD student Julia Bergholm is traveling between Sweden and Ethiopia, and on the way she discovers a brand new virus - now called the ‘Sulu virus’. Where will this project, originally about calves, end?

At the end of August 2022, Julia Bergholm will begin her doctoral studies in a research project on diarrhea in calves at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, SLU. Plans for the project's fieldwork in Ethiopia begin to take shape fairly immediately, and less than six months later she is on the plane to the east coast of Africa.

“I had two suitcases with me; one was my personal bag and the other was filled with lab materials,” says Julia Bergholm, a PhD student at the Department of Animal Biosciences.

In order to collect and store the samples necessary for the project, Julia read up on the climate conditions and bought all the equipment in the form of both laboratory materials and chemicals that might be necessary.

Julia's task was to collect samples from calves both affected and free of diarrheal disease, store the samples in a way that would not risk destroying them, and start up the first investigative phase from the base in Ethiopia. But conditions were not always perfect. The cold chain (which keeps the samples refrigerated) could be compromised - and hours-long power cuts could occur in the laboratory.

In addition, the work required strict safety measures.

There are many diseases in Ethiopia that we don't have in Sweden, and the viruses we handle in the samples from sick animals there are ones that can also spread, including to us humans. Therefore, a careful and safe way of working was required, both out on the farms and inside the lab," says Julia Bergholm.

Before it was time to travel home with the samples, the research team also chose to inactivate the samples, so that no living material would be brought across the Swedish border. Then it was time to pack up what was left of the sample material, get on the plane home and, after landing, start up the more advanced investigations in Sweden.

Returned to Sweden: Discovered a brand new virus

Using advanced technology, Julia Bergholm started looking for the so-called RNA viruses present in the samples from the sick animals. Not surprisingly, she discovered many different variants that have been linked to sick animals in other countries, although they had not previously been identified in animals in Ethiopia.

But then something unexpected happened.

A brand new virus appeared:

Through a method called metagenomics, where instead of looking for specific viruses, you search in depth (with the help of so-called sequencing) for everything that can be found in the sample, a completely new virus appeared, says Julia and continues: I took the help of a researcher who works with classifying viruses, thus keeping track of different varieties, variants and families, and he also assessed that this was something new. We named it ‘Suluvirus’, after the area it was found in.

Being able to discover new viruses shows that metagenomics is a powerful tool to count on for the future. But the big question for this project remains: is it the Sulu virus, one of the other RNA viruses found, or something else entirely that is causing disease and mortality in so many animals in Ethiopia?

To answer that, further comparisons are needed between what is found in the samples from the sick calves, and from the healthy ones. And to make those results more reliable, Julia Bergholm is now planning another trip back to Ethiopia, to sample even more animals.

The Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) has several ongoing collaborative projects with developing countries with the aim of developing cooperation as well as exchanging experiences.

For more than 10 years, between 2013 and 2023, the Swedish Research Council supported research of importance to poverty reduction and sustainable development in low-income countries. The support also went to collaborations and knowledge exchange between researchers in Sweden and researchers in low-income and lower middle-income countries. This project, “Improving animal and human health by identifying the infectious agents behind diarrheal diseases in young ruminants in Ethiopia” is one of them. Funding will continue until the project is completed.

Examples of other collaborative projects ongoing at SLU are:

 

 

A long and important journey - for our common world and against future pandemics

But how does a project so far away from Sweden become relevant and important to us here? Well, because we live in a global world, where everything is ultimately connected.

Personally, I think it is important not to categorize research as important or less important. All research is important for the global, shared world we live in. Everything is interconnected, and collaborations are what move us forward together," says PhD student Julia Bergholm.

In addition, projects like this one, where viruses are mapped, can be part of the work to monitor which viruses are present and spreading worldwide. This work can prevent and prepare us for major outbreaks that, in the worst case, can develop into something we all know well today: Pandemics.

The major reasons for implementing this project can be listed in several points, such as:

  • To reduce the high mortality rate of young animals (calves) in Ethiopia, which can provide:
    • Better animal welfare for the calves, the major protagonists of diarrheal diseases.
    • Better economy for both individuals and the country as a whole
    • Better human health as a consequence of better animal health, as the risk of any infectious diseases spilling over to humans is reduced
    • Reduced need to use antibiotics due to ignorance of the causes of diarrheal diseases - and instead provide safer treatments
    • More sustainable animal husbandry in the country. Today, Ethiopia is the country with the highest number of livestock in all of Africa, and has the fourth highest number of cows globally, which has a major environmental impact. Many animals are necessary today as many get sick, produce poorly and die, but this need not be the case in the future.
    • In the long term, help to develop new vaccines, if a particular virus is detected and stands out in the sick animals.

Fearless and respectful - now and in the future

“I think viruses are so fascinating because they are so changeable; on the one hand small and in need of another living organism as a host, and at the same time they can cause huge problems, something we saw during the pandemic when the covid virus spread between humans, but also in many different animal diseases,” says Julia Bergholm when it's time to round off.

For her, this project is a start. And hopefully something that can lead the way for even more research in the field, both in Ethiopia and other parts of the world.

And for her own part, she hopes to continue her career with a focus on viruses.

I have such a strong memory from when I was a teenager of seeing Contagion, a movie that was just so realistic that I felt “God how cool, I want to work with that!” and now that it's become my reality, it feels really cool," says Julia Bergholm.

In the future, she dreams of combining practical work, perhaps in government, with continuing research - to work on preventing disease outbreaks from many angles. But despite the threats that viruses pose to us humans as well as the animals of our planet, Julia expresses no fear:

I certainly don't walk around scared, but I have a huge respect for viruses and the damage they can do. I think the most important thing is that we continue to learn more in order to both understand and be able to develop working routines for if, or when, outbreaks occur. Something I believe may become even more important in the future, as the climate changes and diseases we previously only saw in warm parts of the world spread to ever larger areas," concludes Julia Bergholm.
Photo of a car parked in the wild in Ethiopia during fieldwork.
"I'm the one who's been there, collected the samples, brought it to Sweden and analyzed the data. I really enjoy this project", says PhD student Julia Bergholm. Now: on to new adventures! Photo: Julia Bergholm, SLU

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