Climate change will bring major changes to the epidemiology of infectious diseases through changes in microbial and vector geographic range. Human defenses against microbial diseases rely on advanced ...immunity that includes innate and adaptive arms and endothermy, which creates a thermal restriction zone for many microbes. Given that microbes can adapt to higher temperatures, there is concern that global warming will select for microbes with higher heat tolerance that can defeat our endothermy defenses and bring new infectious disease. Here, Casadevall discusses the strong possibility that new, previously unknown infectious diseases will emerge from warmer climates as microbes adapt to higher global temperatures that can defeat our endothermy thermal barrier.
The 2021 Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award honors Drs. Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman for key contributions that allowed mRNA vaccines to become reality. The utility and effectiveness ...of this approach were amply demonstrated in the rapid rollout of vaccines for the prevention of COVID-19. Within a year of their deployment, mRNA vaccines have had a tremendous impact in vaccinated populations in reducing COVID-19 cases and associated mortality. mRNA vaccines are not only a very powerful weapon for containing SARS-CoV-2, but also promise to transform future vaccine approaches, and their development constitutes a true revolution in medicine.
The evolution of intracellular pathogens is considered in the context of ambiguities in basic definitions and the diversity of host-microbe interactions. Intracellular pathogenesis is a subset of a ...larger world of host-microbe interactions that includes amoeboid predation and endosymbiotic existence. Intracellular pathogens often reveal genome reduction. Despite the uniqueness of each host-microbe interaction, there are only a few general solutions to the problem of intracellular survival, especially in phagocytic cells. Similarities in intracellular pathogenic strategies between phylogenetically distant microbes suggest convergent evolution. For discerning such patterns, it is useful to consider whether the microbe is acquired from another host or directly from the environment. For environmentally acquired microbes, biotic pressures, such as amoeboid predators, may select for the capacity for virulence. Although often viewed as a specialized adaptation, the capacity for intracellular survival may be widespread among microbes, thus questioning whether the intracellular lifestyle warrants a category of special distinctiveness.
...one of the most convincing experimental models suggesting a protective role for fever used intrathecal Streptococcus pneumoniae infection in mammals and demonstrated a reduction in growth, but ...there was still bacterial replication at the higher temperature, and this experiment could not control for effects of the drugs on host immunity independent of thermal effects 20. ...the efficacy of fever as a defense mechanism may vary with the pathogenic microbe, and if that is the case, protective effects may be diluted away when the data are analyzed in aggregate.
...their vulnerability to fungal diseases echoes the experimental findings in rabbits whereby high resistance is conferred by a combination of high temperature and vertebrate-level immunity 6. Fungal ...diseases can leave traces in the fossil record, as manifested by the finding of Coccidioides-like spherules in a fossil bison from the Holocene 24, but those fossils are very recent relative to the KT event and fungal effects on bone tissue usually reflect chronic infections.
In 2015, the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) General Meeting essentially achieved gender equity, with 48.5% of the oral presentations being given by women. The mechanisms associated with ...increased female participation were (i) making the Program Committee aware of gender statistics, (ii) increasing female representation among session convener teams, and (iii) direct instruction to try to avoid all-male sessions. The experience with the ASM General Meeting shows that it is possible to increase the participation of female speakers in a relatively short time and suggests concrete steps that may be taken to achieve this at other meetings.
Public speaking is very important for academic advancement in science. Historically women have been underrepresented as speakers in many scientific meetings. This article describes concrete steps that were associated with achieving gender equity at a major meeting.
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