It would be hard to identify an approach to cancer treatment that has received more attention recently than anti-checkpoint therapy (Pollack, 2015). This strategy for eliminating tumor cells is based on interfering with one or another pathway that inhibits the...
Last month, Murphy and colleagues (Cell, 2015) published a fascinating report about a patient with an immunodeficiency syndrome that underwent spontaneous resolution. The mechanism for this remarkable outcome points to the importance of somatic cell selection and...
According to estimates by the World Health Organization, in 2013 on the order of 35 million people were infected with HIV worldwide (http://www.who.int/gho/hiv/en/). Globally, about 1.5 million people are believed to have died from AIDS-related diseases in that...
Iron is a critical metal for essential cellular processes, such as respiration, in both human and microbial cells. Thus, in the context of infection, iron is a high-value cellular commodity and an evolutionist might reasonably expect a metallic tug-of-war between...
Epistasis refers to the influence of one genomic mutation or variant on the phenotypic effects of another mutation or variant. Based on available evidence and theory, this phenomenon has a major influence on evolutionary trajectories for organisms of all...