The Evolution & Medicine Review

Two Italian historians, Gilberto Corbellini and Fabio Zampieri, have published a list of milestones in the history of evolutionary medicine, starting with Erasmus Darwin’s Zoonomia.  Access the list here.

By Randolph M. Nesse, Detlev Ganten, T. Ryan Gregory and Gilbert S. Omenn

Journal of Molecular Medicine 2012, DOI: 10.1007/s00109-012-0889-9 (open access May and June 2012)

Abstract

Evolution has long provided a foundation for population genetics, but some major advances in evolutionary biology from the twentieth century that provide foundations for evolutionary medicine are only now being applied in molecular medicine. They include the need for both proximate and evolutionary explanations, kin selection, evolutionary models for cooperation, competition between alleles, co-evolution, and new strategies for tracing phylogenies and identifying signals of selection. Recent advances in genomics are transforming evolutionary biology in ways that create even more opportunities for progress at its interfaces with genetics, medicine, and public health. This article reviews 15 evolutionary principles and their applications in molecular medicine in hopes that readers will use them and related principles to speed the development of evolutionary molecular medicine.

New Opportunities at the Intersection of Evolution and Medicine
A gathering of scientists and entrepreneurs

Admission is free for university affiliated students and faculty but preregistration is required

May 8, 2012, 8:30 – 5:30
Location: Li Ka Shing Center for Learning and Knowledge at Stanford University School of Medicine
Cocktail reception to follow, 5:30-6:30

Sponsored by Stanford University School of Medicine, Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences
Co-presented by the Palo Alto Institute, the Evolution Institute and the Foundation for Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health

Agenda Continue Reading »

The evolution of evolutionary molecular medicine: Genomics are transforming evolutionary biology into a science with new importance for modern medicine

By Detlev Ganten and Randolph Nesse

In Journal of Molecular Medicine 2012, DOI: 10.1007/s00109-012-0903-2 (not open access)

This article introduces a special issue of the Journal of Molecular Medicine on Evolutionary Molecular Medicine. The first paragraphs are below.

New technologies have always been the driving forces for major developments in science. Medicine is no exception. New sequencing technologies have enabled us to begin understanding the genomic and molecular origins of life and the reasons for disease; they are also transforming evolutionary biology into a new, precise, molecular science that has enormous promise for advancing medicine and public health [1]. This issue of the Journal of Molecular Medicine has invited papers to discuss this exciting development.

Evolution comes to medicine, genomics comes to evolution Medical doctors are trained to taking a detailed history from their patients, their personal history, a family history (and tree if indicated), and the time course symptoms and laboratory tests. Now we look back into the history of mankind and to the origins of life 3.5 billion years ago to understand why we get sick. The history-taking process has thus been extended from the individual to his phylogenetic ancestors. The transformation of medicine by genomics will eventually be recognized among the most significant in a long history of innovations. The beginnings of modern medicine were made…(see article for more)

Prenatal Factors Contribute to the Emergence of Kwashiorkor or Marasmus in Severe Undernutrition: Evidence for the Predictive Adaptation Model
By Forrester TE, Badaloo AV, Boyne MS, Osmond C, Thompson D, et al. (2012)
PLoS ONE 7(4): e35907. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0035907 (open access)

Abstract

Background

Severe acute malnutrition in childhood manifests as oedematous (kwashiorkor, marasmic kwashiorkor) and non-oedematous (marasmus) syndromes with very different prognoses. Kwashiorkor differs from marasmus in the patterns of protein, amino acid and lipid metabolism when patients are acutely ill as well as after rehabilitation to ideal weight for height. Metabolic patterns among marasmic patients define them as metabolically thrifty, while kwashiorkor patients function as metabolically profligate. Such differences might underlie syndromic presentation and prognosis. Continue Reading »

Both Nature and Science are currently celebrating the 100^th anniversary of the birth of an icon of logic, computer science, and mathematical biology: Alan Turing.  In reading Andrew Hodges’s spectacular biography of Turing (1983) many years ago I came to appreciate that the subject of the book was both a deeply creative and extraordinarily rigorous thinker.  Although Turing is known for seminal achievements in mathematical logic and computer science, his most directly practical and immediately consequential contribution was Continue Reading »

Tags: additive characters, Alan Turing, causal decomposition, cells, computer science, contextual analysis, cooperation, cross-level by-products, diachronic, emergent characters, evolution, evolutionary game theory, focal level, G. C. Williams, gametes, genes, gene’s-eye perspective, genic selection, George Price, hierarchical organization, kin selection, levels-of-selection controversy, logic, macroevolution, mathematics, maximum deduction, meiotic drive, military code, multi-cellular organisms, multi-level selection 1, multi-level selection 2, pluralism, Price equation, R. A. Fisher, realism, reciprocal altruism, reductionism, Richard Dawkins, Richard Lewontin, selfish genetic element, statistical decomposition, synchronic, W. D. Hamilton

By  Ruslan Medzhitov, David S. Schneider, and Miguel P. Soares
Science 24 February 2012:
Vol. 335 no. 6071 pp. 936-941
DOI: 10.1126/science.1214935 (not open access)

Abstract
The immune system protects from infections primarily by detecting and eliminating the invading pathogens; however, the host organism can also protect itself from infectious diseases by reducing the negative impact of infections on host fitness. This ability to tolerate a pathogen’s presence is a distinct host defense strategy, which has been largely overlooked in animal and human studies. Continue Reading »

By Edmund Kenwood LeGrand and Joe Alcock
In The Quarterly Review of Biology Vol. 87, No. 1 (March 2012), pp. 3-18 (not open access)

Abstract
The acute-phase response (APR) is a systemic response to severe trauma, infection, and cancer, although many of the numerous cytokine-mediated components of the APR are incompletely understood. Some of these components, such as fever, reduced availability of iron and zinc, and nutritional restriction due to anorexia, appear to be stressors capable of causing harm to both the pathogen and the host. We review how the host benefits from differences in susceptibility to stress between pathogens and the host. Continue Reading »

By David Fournier, Friedrich C. Luft, Michael Bader, Detlev Ganten and Miguel A. Andrade-Navarro
In Journal of Molecular Medicine 2012, DOI: 10.1007/s00109-012-0894-z  (open access)

The renin–angiotensin–aldosterone system (RAAS) is not the sole, but perhaps the most important volume regulator in vertebrates. To gain insights into the function and evolution of its components, we conducted a phylogenetic analysis of its main related genes. We found that important parts of the system began to appear with primitive chordates and tunicates and that all major components were present at the divergence of bony fish, Continue Reading »

Two new journals about evolution and medicine are about to start publishing.   The Journal of Evolutionary Medicine, edited by Paul Ewald, is now accepting submissions. More on the other journal, Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, when it is ready to accept submissions.

About the Journal of Evolutionary Medicine

The Journal of Evolutionary Medicine is a scholarly open access, peer-reviewed, and fully refereed journal. The goal of the journal is to improve understanding of medical issues through the integration of evolutionary principles and perspectives.  Articles can specifically consider evolutionary patterns or processes, or simply incorporate an evolutionary perspective into the analysis of a medical topic.  The journal welcomes submissions over a broad range of disciplines and approaches, including epidemiology, clinical studies, mathematical modeling, computer simulation, comparative studies, historical analyses, and health policy.  The scale of inquiry spanned by the articles is comprehensive from molecular mechanisms and physiological processes to population characteristics and global health.  The scope of conditions considered is  also wide-ranging, inclusive of infectious, genetic, and environmental influences on health and disease and the interplay among these influences.

Aims and Scope

The Journal of Evolutionary Medicine publishes articles that involve application of evolutionary principles to the health sciences.

Papers will be accepted across the entire spectrum of scientific inquiry, including the following:

·         mathematical modeling, computer simulations, and other theoretical analyses;

·         perspectives, presentation of hypotheses, and historical articles;

·         laboratory, clinical, epidemiological, and comparative studies;

·         policy related to public health and research strategies.

Pain has long been recognized as one of the cardinal symptoms of myocardial ischemia and myocardial infarction. The adaptive significance of this pain has been unclear. If anything, pain was thought to motivate people to lie down and rest, which would reduce oxygen consumption and might relieve their ischemia. But the pain of myocardial ischemia is exceptionally severe, Continue Reading »

Don’t Fall Off the Adaptation Cliff: When Asymmetrical Fitness Selects for Suboptimal Traits

Vercken E, Wellenreuther M, Svensson EI, Mauroy B (2012) Don’t Fall Off the Adaptation Cliff: When Asymmetrical Fitness Selects for Suboptimal Traits. PLoS ONE 7(4): e34889. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0034889 (open access)

A core tenet of evolutionary medicine has been that selection maximizes inclusive fitness, not health or longevity.  This article provides a method for addressing the issue, and concludes “future studies should aim at analysing the optimization of genotype fitness instead of phenotype fitness.”

Abstract
The cliff-edge hypothesis introduces the counterintuitive idea that the trait value associated with the maximum of an asymmetrical fitness function is not necessarily the value that is selected for if the trait shows variability in its phenotypic expression. We develop a model of population dynamics to show that, in such a system, the evolutionary stable strategy depends on both the shape of the fitness function around its maximum and the amount of phenotypic variance. The model provides quantitative predictions of the expected trait value distribution and provides an alternative quantity that should be maximized (“genotype fitness”) instead of the classical fitness function (“phenotype fitness”). We test the model’s predictions on three examples: (1) litter size in guinea pigs, (2) sexual selection in damselflies, and (3) the geometry of the human lung. In all three cases, the model’s predictions give a closer match to empirical data than traditional optimization theory models. Our model can be extended to most ecological situations, and the evolutionary conditions for its application are expected to be common in nature.

Infection, mutation, and cancer evolution.  By Ewald P, Swain Ewald H

In J Mol Med: 1-7. DOI 10.1007/s00109-012-0891-2 (not open access)

Abstract

An understanding of oncogenesis can be fostered by an integration of mechanistic studies with evolutionary considerations, which help explain why these mechanisms occur. This integration emphasizes infections and mutations as joint essential causes for many cancers. It suggests that infections may play a broader causal role in oncogenesis than has been generally appreciated. An evolutionary perspective also suggests that oncogenic viruses will tend to be transmitted by routes that provide infrequent opportunities for transmission, Continue Reading »

Evolutionary Foundations for Medicine and Public Health: Focus on Infection and Cancer

August 6-10 at the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory, Bar Harbor, Maine

Registration now open.
CME credit available

This course will be limited to 40 participants.  It will be appropriate for those with a background in biology and/or medicine at diverse levels. Special expertise in evolutionary biology is not required, however those who have already studied evolutionary biology will have specialized opportunities. In order to maximize benefits to this developing field, admission preference will be offered to physicians and professors who teach or anticipate teaching courses on the subject, and to members of minority groups who may be eligible for support from the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center. Researchers and students from advanced undergraduate to postdocs will be warmly welcomed. Continue Reading »

The crisis of psychiatry – insights and prospects from evolutionary theory
By Martin Brune, Jay Belsky, Horacio Fabrega, Jay R. Feierman, Paul Gilbert, Kalman Glantz, Joseph Polimeni, John S. Price, Julio Sanjuan, Roger Sullivan, Alfonso Troisi, Daniel R. Wilson    In the Feb 2012 World Psychiatry Journal

Opening paragraph…
Darwin’s emphasis on natural selection has had a transformative
influence on how biological and medical sciences
are conceptualized and conducted. However, the relevance
of his ideas for the understanding of psychiatric conditions
is still under-appreciated. Continue Reading »

The new tools for determining nucleotide sequences for whole genomes can sometimes present a problem of data analysis: How can mutations that influence important phenotypes be distinguished from mutations that may be of minimal or no impact on fitness, so-called passenger mutations that arise and persist primarily by chance and can greatly outnumber adaptive genetic variants?  Merely finding nucleotide substitutions or larger genomic differences in comparing independent isolates of a microbial pathogen does not automatically reveal which genetic variants are responsible for the medically-relevant differences in pathogen attributes.

Lieberman et al. (2011) have approached this problem by determining the whole genome sequences for 112 isolates of an opportunistic bacterial pathogen, Burkholderia dolosa, obtained from 14 cystic fibrosis (CF) patients, including the initial patient infected, who were all part of an epidemic of small scale in the Boston area.  A total of 39 individuals were infected in the course of the outbreak, and the patient samples were taken over a period of 16 years.  Bacterial samples were obtained primarily from the airways and from blood.  For these genome sequences, the average read depth was 37x, and the genomes were aligned based on a B. dolosa reference genome. Continue Reading »

Tags: ancestral phenotype, antibiotic resistance, Burkholderia dolosa, ciprofloxacin, cystic fibrosis, derived phenotype, epidemiology, genome sequencing, isogenic strains, last common ancestor (LCA), lipopolysaccharide (LPS), mutation, O-antigens, pathogen transmission network, phylogeny, SNP

Evolutionary Medicine Summer School

Durham UK Evolutionary Medicine Summer School Course

As the Supreme Court prepare to consider the Affordable  Care Act, the New England Journal has published a thoughtful commentary by Harvey Fineberg on on what is needed to fix the US health care system.  He is President of the Institute of Medicine, and Chair of an Advisory Committee for a NESCent group creating new education materials for evolution and medicine.

A Successful and Sustainable Health System — How to Get There from Here  by Harvey V. Fineberg, M.D., Ph.D.

N Engl J Med 2012; 366:1020-1027March 15, 2012 (the article is open access)

A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels.

— Albert Einstein1

America’s health system is neither as successful as it should be nor as sustainable as it must be. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA) introduces the prospects for major reforms in payment for and organization of care, in prevention and population health, and in approaches to continuous improvement. Yet it remains under legal assault and a cloud of controversy. Even if it is fully implemented, the ACA will not represent a complete solution to the core dilemma of affordability and performance. The country’s political appetite for further reform may be sated, but unless we attend to the major sources of waste and impediments to performance, the United States will remain vulnerable to an excessively costly health system that delivers incommensurate health benefit.  Continue Reading »