23 papers · ranked by Valyu relevance
David A. Kennedy
Why would a pathogen evolve to kill its hosts when killing a host ends a pathogen’s own opportunity for transmission? A vast body of scientific literature has attempted to answer this question using “trade-off theory,” which posits that host mortality persists due to its cost being balanced by benefits of other traits…
Sunetra Gupta
By definition, all pathogens cause some level of harm to their hosts. If this harm occurs while the pathogen is transmitting, it can negatively affect the pathogen's fitness by shortening the duration over which transmission can occur. However, many of the factors that increase virulence (i.e. harm to host) also…
Carles Barril, Marina Vegué
How and to what extent different factors in pathogen-host dynamics shape virulence has been largely debated due to evolutionary forces acting in opposite directions. Here we present a model of pathogen-host dynamics with the aim of studying how competition between pathogens and the immune response of the host affect…
Zi-Ru Jiang
Pathogen virulence is a central trait shaping disease dynamics and management outcomes. Classical evolutionary theory predicts that virulence should be constrained by trade-offs between transmission and host survival, often favoring intermediate optima. However, many vector-borne forest diseases exhibit persistently…
Ana Korša, Moritz Baur, Nora K. E. Schulz, Jaime M. Anaya-Rojas + 3 more
'Alexander Mellmann' 'Joachim Kurtz' 'Robert L. Unckless'] Understanding the drivers and mechanisms of virulence evolution is still a major goal of evolutionary biologists and epidemiologists. Theory predicts that the way virulence evolves depends on the balance between the benefits and costs it provides to pathogen…
Sudam Surasinghe, Ketty Kabengele, Paul E. Turner, C. Brandon Ogbunugafor
'C. Brandon Ogbunugafor'] Models are often employed to integrate knowledge about epidemics across scales and simulate disease dynamics. While these approaches have played a central role in studying the mechanics underlying epidemics, we lack ways to reliably predict how the relationship between virulence (the harm to…
Ana Korša, Moritz Baur, Nora K.E. Schulz, Jaime M. Anaya-Rojas + 2 more
Understanding the drivers and mechanisms of virulence evolution is still a major goal of evolutionary biologists and epidemiologists. Theory predicts that the way virulence evolves depends on the balance between the benefits and costs it provides to pathogen fitness. Additionally, host responses to infections, such as…
David A. Kennedy
A common assumption in the evolution of virulence theory literature is that pathogens transmit better when they exploit their host more heavily, but by doing so, they impose a greater risk of killing their host, thus truncating infectious periods and reducing their own opportunities for transmission. Here, I derive an…
Ádám Kun, András G. Hubai, Adrienn Král, Judit Mokos + 2 more
'Benjámin Áron Mikulecz' 'Ádám Radványi'] The direction the evolution of virulence takes in connection with any pathogen is a long-standing question. Formerly, it was theorized that pathogens should always evolve to be less virulent. As observations were not in line with this theoretical outcome, new theories emerged…
C. Brandon Ogbunugafor, Sudam Surasinghe
| Asymptomatic infection has gained notoriety as an important feature of infectious disease dynamics. Despite increasing attention, there have been few rigorous examinations of how asymptomatic transmission influences pathogen evolution. In this study, we apply evolutionary invasion analysis to compute optimal…
Victor Chardès, Andrea Mazzolini, Thierry Mora, Aleksandra M. Walczak
'Aleksandra M. Walczak'] Antigenic variation is the main immune escape mechanism for RNA viruses like influenza or SARS-CoV-2. While high mutation rates promote antigenic escape, they also induce large mutational loads and reduced fitness. It remains unclear how this cost-benefit trade-off selects the mutation rate of…
Daniel Antunes Maciel Villela
The emergence or adaptation of pathogens may lead to epidemics or even pandemics, highlighting the need for a thorough understanding of pathogen evolution. The tradeoff hypothesis suggests that virulence evolves to reach an optimal transmission intensity relative to the mortality caused by the disease. This study…
Anjali Gupta, Robert L. Unckless
The pathogenicity of a microbe is difficult to define in a comparative context: across microbes with varying virulence or across host genotypes with varying susceptibilities. Several different statistical approaches have been employed to investigate pathogenicity and susceptibility. Measures like proportional mortality…
Golsa Sayyar, Ábel Garab, Gergely Röst
Predicting viral evolution presents a significant challenge and is a critical public health priority. In response to this challenge, we develop a novel model for viral evolution that considers a trade-off between immunity evasion and transmissibility. The model selects for a new strain with the highest invasion…
Yu Ning, Enrique González-Tortuero, Jeroen Wagemans, Flor I. Arias-Sánchez
Introduction Bacteriophage therapy is emerging as a promising alternative to antibiotics, particularly in the face of rising antimicrobial resistance. However, concerns remain regarding host shifts, where therapeutic phages could evolve to infect and harm beneficial commensal bacteria. Understanding how frequently host…
Steven A. Frank
Natural selection acts on traits at different scales, often with opposing consequences. This article identifies the particular forces that act at each scale and how those forces combine to determine the overall evolutionary outcome. A series of extended models derive from the tragedy of the commons, illustrating…
Lexi Xu, Norah Shen
Our current treatments for bacterial infections are under threat by the growth of antibiotic resistance in many different pathogens. Of these pathogens, Salmonella is a particularly widespread microbe, infecting over a million people annually as the leading source of food-borne diseases. One potential solution for…
Authors not listed
Peptide-binders have been generated by Rosetta-Fold diffusion (RFdiffusion) against the dimer-interfaces of the positive regulatory factor A (prfA) regulon of Listeria monocitogenes (Lm). Lm are amongst those raising worldwide concerns because of their multiple-resistant food-borne infective intracellular Gram-positive…
Authors not listed
One Health seeks to integrate and balance the health of humans, animals, and environmental systems. These three spheres are intricately interconnected through microbiomes, which are universally present and exchange microbes and genes, influencing not only human and animal health but also key environmental…
Authors not listed
Antibiotic resistance represents an emerging global health threat. In this contribution we report all-atom molecular dynamics simulations of a bacterial protein in Acinetobacter baumanii. By using enhanced sampling we show the favorable internalization of the antibiotic via the CarO porin. This results correlates with…
Authors not listed
Because of the emergence of F13L mutations in MonkeyPox Virus (MPXV)-infected patients with resistances to Tecovirimat-treatment, alternative drugs are actively searched. Aiming to help on these searches, computational strategies to generate rather than screen for new drug-like ligand candidates were explored here.…
Sheikh Sunzid Ahmed
Francisella tularensis Schu S4 is the causal agent of a sporadic zoonotic disease known as Tularemia, which has shown epidemic outbreaks recently in certain parts of the world. This pathogen is a potential agent of biowarfare or bioterrorism and is classified as a category A pathogen by the National Institute of…
Kyle Macauslane, Cassandra Pegg, Kirsty Short, Benjamin Schulz
Acute respiratory infections (ARIs) are amongst the leading causes of death and disability, and the greatest burden of disease impacts children, pregnant women, and the elderly. Respiratory viruses account for the majority of ARIs. The unfolded protein response (UPR) is a host homeostatic defence mechanism primarily…