Pathogens and Parasites: Strategies and Challenges

Abstract

The threat of emerging infections grows with the swelling tide of the human population and the continued disregard for the health of the environment. One of our most urgent challenges in public health is to understand the evolution and natural history of pathogens and parasites and how a sudden shift in virulence or in targeted host population may occur without warning. Viruses call for especially close watching. They are mostly genes and have mastered the art of manipulating other genes. Some are planktonic in the world's oceans, numbering 10 billion per liter of seawater; some are planktonic in our blood; some lie low inside cells; some take over a cell's replication machinery and explode the cell with new copies of themselves; and some splice their genes seamlessly into our chromosomes. The twin themes of genetic diversity and natural selection are explored in this review, with their relevance to viruses, the vertebrate immune system, virulence, and communicable disease epidemiology.

Assessment of viral community functional potential from viral metagenomes may be hampered by contamination with cellular sequences

“…Although viruses were first believed to carry only those genes that are directly involved in viral reproduction [ 6 ], accumulation of complete viral genome sequences during the past decade revealed a deviation from this general paradigm. Besides the bona fide viral genes (i.e.…”

Large-scale transcriptome sequencing and gene analyses in the crab-eating macaque (Macaca fascicularis) for biomedical research

“…The induced method involved treatment with specific chemicals (e.g., 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP) or streptozotocin (STZ)[ 25 - 27 ], whereas the surgical method (e.g., middle cerebral artery occlusion model for ischemia) were created through specific types of surgery [ 28 ]. The infection method was simpler than previously described since humans and the crab-eating macaque have numerous “anthroponosis” (the opposite of “zoonosis”), including influenza, tuberculosis, and hepatitis [ 29 ]. Lastly, simple replacement method was the usage of natural crab-eating monkey for specific purpose (e.g., drug safety or efficacy testing) [ 30 ].…”

Ontogeny, Ontology, and Phylogeny: Embryonic Life and Stem Cell Technologies

“…And the ontological status of the illnesses to which biomedical technology responds is equally challenged, in an endless regression, as the division between veterinary and human medicine, or between zoonoses (diseases humans can catch from animals) and what have recently been dubbed humanooses, is called into question. 53 This increasingly permeable, increasingly constructed barrier between human and animal presents us with another form of life to negotiate, whose boundary lies not between silicon and carbon, but rather between steps in the evolutionary ladder-or the branching developmental tree-of phylogenetic life forms. Stem cell technologies thus challenge both the temporal and spatial boundaries of human life, both our biography and our biological niche, giving a much broader meaning to the questioning of embryonic personhood.…”