Co-infection, re-infection and genetic evolution of SARS-CoV-2: Implications for the COVID-19 pandemic control

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
2019 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Jablonka ◽  
Simona Ginsburg ◽  
Daniel Dor

Abstract Heyes argues that human metacognitive strategies (cognitive gadgets) evolved through cultural rather than genetic evolution. Although we agree that increased plasticity is the hallmark of human metacognition, we suggest cognitive malleability required the genetic accommodation of gadget-specific processes that enhanced the overall cognitive flexibility of humans.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Millington ◽  
Peter M. Cox ◽  
Jonathan R. Moore ◽  
Gabriel Yvon-Durocher

Abstract We are in a period of relatively rapid climate change. This poses challenges for individual species and threatens the ecosystem services that humanity relies upon. Temperature is a key stressor. In a warming climate, individual organisms may be able to shift their thermal optima through phenotypic plasticity. However, such plasticity is unlikely to be sufficient over the coming centuries. Resilience to warming will also depend on how fast the distribution of traits that define a species can adapt through other methods, in particular through redistribution of the abundance of variants within the population and through genetic evolution. In this paper, we use a simple theoretical ‘trait diffusion’ model to explore how the resilience of a given species to climate change depends on the initial trait diversity (biodiversity), the trait diffusion rate (mutation rate), and the lifetime of the organism. We estimate theoretical dangerous rates of continuous global warming that would exceed the ability of a species to adapt through trait diffusion, and therefore lead to a collapse in the overall productivity of the species. As the rate of adaptation through intraspecies competition and genetic evolution decreases with species lifetime, we find critical rates of change that also depend fundamentally on lifetime. Dangerous rates of warming vary from 1°C per lifetime (at low trait diffusion rate) to 8°C per lifetime (at high trait diffusion rate). We conclude that rapid climate change is liable to favour short-lived organisms (e.g. microbes) rather than longer-lived organisms (e.g. trees).


2003 ◽  
Vol 08 (01) ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Lambert ◽  
A. Kandel ◽  
M. Schneider

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel A. Rodriguez ◽  
Jessica Yang ◽  
Michael A. Durante ◽  
Alexander N. Shoushtari ◽  
Stergios J. Moschos ◽  
...  

AbstractUveal melanoma (UM) is the most common primary intraocular malignancy in adults and leads to deadly metastases for which there is no approved treatment. Genetic events driving early tumor development are well-described, but those occurring later during metastatic progression remain poorly understood. We performed multiregional genomic sequencing on 22 tumors collected from two patients with widely metastatic UM who underwent rapid autopsy. We observed multiple seeding events from the primary tumors, metastasis-to-metastasis seeding, polyclonal seeding, and late driver variants in ATM, KRAS, and other genes previously unreported in UM. These findings reveal previously unrecognized temporal and anatomic complexity in the genetic evolution of metastatic uveal melanoma, and they highlight the distinction between early and late phases of UM genetic evolution with implications for novel therapeutic approaches.


2012 ◽  
Vol 93 (9) ◽  
pp. 1996-2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kim B. Westgeest ◽  
Miranda de Graaf ◽  
Mathieu Fourment ◽  
Theo M. Bestebroer ◽  
Ruud van Beek ◽  
...  

Each year, influenza viruses cause epidemics by evading pre-existing humoral immunity through mutations in the major glycoproteins: the haemagglutinin (HA) and the neuraminidase (NA). In 2004, the antigenic evolution of HA of human influenza A (H3N2) viruses was mapped (Smith et al., Science 305, 371–376, 2004) from its introduction in humans in 1968 until 2003. The current study focused on the genetic evolution of NA and compared it with HA using the dataset of Smith and colleagues, updated to the epidemic of the 2009/2010 season. Phylogenetic trees and genetic maps were constructed to visualize the genetic evolution of NA and HA. The results revealed multiple reassortment events over the years. Overall rates of evolutionary change were lower for NA than for HA1 at the nucleotide level. Selection pressures were estimated, revealing an abundance of negatively selected sites and sparse positively selected sites. The differences found between the evolution of NA and HA1 warrant further analysis of the evolution of NA at the phenotypic level, as has been done previously for HA.


2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 235-253 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taylor Davis

In the scientific literature on religious evolution, two competing theories appeal to group selection to explain the relationship between religious belief and altruism, or costly, prosocial behavior. Both theories agree that group selection plays an important role in cultural evolution, affecting psychological traits that individuals acquire through social learning. They disagree, however, about whether group selection has also played a role in genetic evolution, affecting traits that are inherited genetically. Recently, Jonathan Haidt has defended the most fully developed account based on genetic group selection, and I argue here that problems with this account reveal good reasons to doubt that genetic group selection has played any important role in human evolution at all. Thus, considering the role of group selection in religious evolution is important not just because of what it reveals about religious psychology and religious evolution, but also because of what it reveals about the role of group selection in human evolution more generally.


Science ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 284 (5423) ◽  
pp. 2055a-2055 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. L. Mesnick
Keyword(s):  

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