A few years ago, a local health officer took me to the seafood market in Wuhan [Huanan Seafood Market, China, where SARS-CoV-2 was first detected]. I saw cats, raccoons, dogs and rodents; people were interacting closely with these live animals. The officer told me how dangerous the place is. When in January this year, it was declared the place of the COVID-19 outbreak. I was not surprised," recalls Professor Edward Holmes, an evolutionary biologist and virologist.

A National Health and Medical Research Council Australia Fellow and professor at the University of Sydney since 2012, Holmes is distinguished for his work on the emergence and evolution of viruses. He has used genomic and phylogenetic approaches to reveal the major mechanisms of virus evolution and determined the genetic and epidemiological processes that explain how viruses jump species boundaries and spread in new hosts. His work has revealed the origin, evolution and molecular epidemiology of important human pathogens, including influenza, HIV and dengue, and enabled more accurate assessments of what types of virus are most likely to emerge in human populations and whether they will evolve human-to-human transmission.