Among the most pressing global public health problems at present is the AIDS epidemic. While it is clear that chemotherapy and behavioral interventions have much to offer in limiting the spread of infections by the causative virus, HIV-1, interest in developing a...
In the May 26 (2011) issue of Nature, Vijaykrishna et al. address patterns of evolution and transmission exhibited by swine influenza A viruses (SwIV) isolated from pigs beings slaughtered in Hong Kong between May 1998 and January 2010. Although the focus of the...
In his essay (2011) on the history of Darwinian (or evolutionary) medicine, Jonathan Fuller describes potentially relevant interests and insights that preceded the famous paper by Nesse and Williams (1991) that is widely regarded as having catalyzed the resurgence of...
Among human pathogens, Streptococcus pneumoniae holds an especially prominent place in the history of biomedical investigation. Griffith (1928) described the transforming principle, a soluble substance released by dead, virulent pneumococci that could render...
Two recent papers published online at scienceexpress.org describe studies of antibodies claimed to interfere with infection of host cells by a wide range of HIV-1 strains. These studies strongly suggest that the evolutionary potential of the humoral immune response...