Tackling virology, H5N1 bird flu, and a new climate change course with Professor Zheng Xing

VBS Professor Zheng Xing began his academic career at Anhui Medical University in Hefei, Anhui, China where he earned his Bachelor's of Medicine degree in Public Health. He then pursued a Master's of Science degree in the research field of Virology at the Chinese Academy of Preventative Medicine in Beijing, China. Dr. Xing then made the jump to the USA to pursue his Ph.D. at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York in the field of Veterinary Medicine, and he completed his Postdoctoral Fellowship in the area of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California at Berkeley in Berkeley, California. 

Dr. Xing has been with the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Minnesota since 2010. Dr. Xing's research passion is in the field of virology and he was recently awarded funding to research the H5N1 bird flu. In addition to research, Dr. Xing also is teaching a new honors course on the topic of climate change. Dr. Xing, kindly agreed to give a brief interview about his current projects.

Can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into your field of expertise?

I became interested in viruses back when I was a college student. I was fascinated by the morphology of various viruses, their behaviors as parasites, and what they could do in their hosts. Their importance in human and animal health was of course the key factor to attract me to pursue a graduate study in virology. Back in the 80's, AIDS, hepatitis B and C, and viral hemorrhagic fevers were on news headlines quite often, and molecular biology techniques were emerging and developed at a fast pace. I had an opportunity to study molecular virology of a Hantann virus, which is a zoonotic virus and was highly pathogenic to humans,  trying to understand its replication in rodents and develop vaccines. It’s a changing world and we seem to have more and more new pathogens to emerge, especially viruses, and that’s indeed the trend. Most new pathogens come from the environment and wildlife, and constantly emerging viruses are one of grand challenges to human society.

What inspired your interest in avian flu research?

In 1997 a highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza outbreak in a poultry market, Hong Kong, sent a shock wave to virus researchers, that the new bird flu virus could be so deadly to birds and humans. What if the bird flu got adapted to spread well in humans? We have seasonal flu each year and are used to it for healthy individuals would have no problems with it. Bird flu kills up to 60% of patients with no exception to healthy adults. I started to work on avian influenza virus (AIV) back when I was at UC Davis studying the roles of bird flu viral proteins in its pathogenesis in chickens. We tried to understand viral immunity and how the virus caused high lethality in birds. 

Even though it is fortunate that highly pathogenic H5N1 flu has only had sporadic cases in humans due to its limited ability for human transmission, H5N1 and other H5 sub-type flu viruses have caused enormous outbreaks in poultry farms and devastated our poultry industry from time to time. The new 2.3.4.4b clade H5N1 has spread to poultry flocks in all fifty states in the past three years. Minnesota is No. 1 state for turkey  Since last March, this H5N1 virus has spread to dairy cattle herds and so far over 700 cattle herds have been affected in seventeen states. It’s critically important to find effective approaches to protect our agricultural animals from the infection and  prevent the virus from further spread.

Can you tell us about your recent USDA-NIFA-AFRI funding (Pathogenicity, Transmission and Prevention of the 2.3.3.4b Clade H5N1 Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza Virus in Poultry)?

The project began with one of our analyses on several strains of the 2.3.4.4b viruses isolated from turkeys in our state.  Minnesota is a critical region in the Central Flyway for seasonal migratory birds and the poultry farms of our state have been hit very seriously by this virus in the past years. The 2.3.4.4b H5N1 was transmitted to North America from Europe by migratory birds in late 2021, and started to produce new variants with low pathogenic bird flu viruses carried by wild birds in North America. Eventually the variant H5N1 strains (through processes called reassortment and recombination) spread further to poultry, and somehow gained ability to infect wildlife mammals and eventually invade the dairy cows in early 2024. The three Minnesotan isolates we analyzed may represent the 2.3.4.4b viruses at three evolutionary phases of this H5N1 in North America since landing in 2021. We propose to compare and analyze the infectivity, transmission, and pathogenesis of these three isolates in vitro and in poultry. Hopefully we will be able to elucidate how these 2.3.4.4b viruses of various evolutionary stages differ in their evolution, mechanism of virulence, and viral pathogenesis in chickens and turkeys after completing the project. We haven’t started the project yet because our IACUC protocol is still pending. Probably nobody studied HPAI H5N1 in poultry in our ABSL3 facility before, so the approval process has taken quite a while.

You are also teaching a new honors course, can you tell us a little more about the course, who is the core audience, and what topics the course will cover?

I enjoy teaching undergraduate courses and I hope students could be inspired early in their college life for something interesting to me, such as science, history, and humanity. Usually my Honors Program course has an enrollment of 18 to 20 students, from freshmen to seniors of all schools with or without majors declared. For many years I have taught one called “Germs and Civilization” (HSEM 2635H), which helps students explore the interaction of humans, animals and microbes and examine how microbes, pathogenic microbes in particular, have influenced human evolution and civilization. I tried to expose students to the thinking from a historic and interdisciplinary perspective that microbes, especially those causing pandemics and epidemic such as Black Death, smallpox, yellow fever, and malaria, may have played a critical role in influencing human history and modern civilization.

Last year I developed a new Honors Program course, “Climate Change and Diseases” (HSEM 2241H). The intention of this course is to help students, and me as well, to understand the basic concepts of climate science, climate change and its potential impact on health. Although people on the left and right keep arguing about the causes of climate change, which becomes politicized, nobody denies the fact that the Earth is changing, our spheres and ecosystems are changing, and the globe is warming up. What is the trend of climate change, its impact on the Earth's ecosystems, and how the change of climate will impact on health are the topics discussed in this course. With selected research articles discussed in class, we analyze the climate and extreme weather data, identify the links between climate change and various diseases, and evaluate the challenges and vulnerabilities of different populations to climate-induced health problems. For the class, I developed a series of topics for students to think about and examine the impact of climate change on the environment, disease vectors, zoonotic diseases and their increasing risks for novel emerging epidemics or pandemics. Students have opportunities to explore the issues such as food security and nutrition-related illnesses, respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, cancer, mental health, ageing, and management of the chronic illnesses that could or have already been influenced by climate change. I am pretty happy the feedback of this course has been pretty positive. This course will be offered in Spring 2026.

For more about Dr. Xing's H5N1 bird flu funding, check out the CVM Profiles, Summer 2025 write up, "Staying ahead of the bird flu threat."