The Evolution and Medicine Review

A new textbook: Principles of evolutionary medicine

Peter Gluckman — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 12:27:21 +0000

Principles of evolutionary medicine by Peter Gluckman, Alan Beedle and Mark Hanson The evolutionary medicine community has long emphasized the need to teach evolution in relation to medicine to medical students. In their efforts to bring evolution into medical schools, advocates of evolutionary medicine encountered various obstacles. These ranged from the unwillingness of school deans to commit ‘precious’ [...]

ShareThis

Protein Dynamics and Evolution

Neil Greenspan — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 18:48:49 +0000

Biological evolution is, obviously, a historical (i.e., time-dependent) process. However, the importance to evolution of dynamics occurring on multiple time scales is still being delineated. I recently attended a symposium sponsored by the Case Department of Physiology and Biophysics. The last speaker was Martin Karplus, an eminent chemist affiliated with both Harvard and the Universite [...]

ShareThis

How to Make Evolution-Proof Insecticides for Malaria Control

The Editors — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 20:12:33 +0000

In a new PLoS Biology article, Read, Lynch and Thomas combine two facts and evolutionary thinking to propose a creative and surprising solution to insecticide resistance and malaria transmission. The facts are: 1. Mosquitoes develop resistance to new insecticides quickly; finding new agents is not like to solve the problem. 2. Most mosquitoes die well before the 10-14 [...]

ShareThis

Slower aging for human populations with lower extrinsic mortality?

Randolph Nesse — Thu, 21 May 2009 14:40:22 +0000

An article in the April, 2009 issue of Evolution, offers provocative support for George Williams’s 1957 prediction that decreased extrinsic mortality rates will select for slower rates of aging. The article compares data from subsistence and European societies in the past 200 years, and concludes that selection may have slowed aging rates in just 10 [...]

ShareThis

Application of Selection to a Clinically-Important Infectious Disease

Neil Greenspan — Thu, 14 May 2009 18:04:02 +0000

There are few examples of the power of natural selection more globally relevant than those pertaining to the influenza A viruses, which, along with the influenza B and C viruses, constitute the orthomyxoviruses. Influenza A viruses kill thousands of people every year and infect numerous species in addition to humans. Virtually any person is potentially [...]

ShareThis

Saving the Autistic Mouse - with Schizophrenia

Bernard Crespi — Sat, 09 May 2009 02:13:28 +0000

Mouse ‘models’ for psychiatric disorders, strains of mice genetically engineered by ‘knocking out’ a specific gene that mediates expression of the disorder, provide invaluable information regarding the genetic, developmental, physiological, and neurological causes of mental diseases in humans. One of the first mouse models relevant to autism was generated via knockout of a gene [...]

ShareThis

Summer Course on Evolutionary Epidemiology

The Editors — Fri, 08 May 2009 17:48:44 +0000

The University of Michigan School of Public Health is offering a one-week, one credit course from July 27-31 on Evolutionary Epidemiology (EPID 788) taught by Betsy Foxman and Randolph Nesse. For details and an application, click above. For the course description, click “continue reading.” New applications of evolutionary theory to medicine are growing and helping to [...]

ShareThis

Hedging against Antiviral Resistance During the Current Influenza Pandemic

Carl Bergstrom — Fri, 01 May 2009 21:40:59 +0000

Hedging against Antiviral Resistance During the Next Current Influenza Pandemic Commentary on: J.T. Wu, G.M. Leung, M. Lipsitch, B. S. Cooper, and S. Riley 2009. Hedging against Antiviral Resistance during the Next Influenza Pandemic Using Small Stockpiles of an Alternative Chemotherapy. PloS Medicine. Online ahead of print 4/30/09. http://www.plos.org/press/plme-06-05-wu.pdf Eight days ago we received the first [...]

ShareThis

MHC Restriction and Host-Pathogen Co-Evolution

Neil Greenspan — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 15:18:03 +0000

This week marks the 35th anniversary of the landmark paper, in Nature [248:701-702, 1974, April 19], by Rolf Zinkernagel and Peter Doherty that established the principle that T lymphocytes [murine cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL) in this study] exhibit specificity for both the nominal antigen (e.g. a gene product derived from a pathogen such as HIV-1 [...]

ShareThis

Darwin Applies to Medical School

The Editors — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 17:53:45 +0000

This week’s Science has an extensive review of the National Academy Sackler Colloquium on Evolution in Health and Medicine. Elizabeth Pennisi packs many examples into just a few paragraphs and gives a vivid sense for the excitement of the meeting and its possible future impact. She contrasts the active participation of physicians at this meeting [...]

ShareThis