Dr. Mark Heise (Professor, Genetics and Microbiology & Immunology) was awarded a new R01 grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) for his project titled “Genetic Analysis of COVID-19 Susceptibility and Resistance Determinants in the Collaborative Cross”. Together with Drs. Ralph Baric (PI, Micro&Immunol), Marty Ferris (co-I, Genetics) and Lisa Gralinski (co-I, Epidemiology), the proposed work will take advantage of a new mouse-adapted SARS-CoV2 virus (maCoV2), which was recently developed in the Baric laboratory, to screen a panel of CC mouse strains for susceptibility to maCoV2-induced disease. This work will accomplish two critical research objectives by: 1) developing critically needed mouse models of nCoV2-induced disease, and 2) identifying polymorphic host genes/pathways that regulate resistance or susceptibility to nCoV2-disease.