DIMACS Workshop on Models of Co-Evolution of Hosts and Pathogens
October 9 - 11, 2006
DIMACS Center, CoRE Building, Rutgers University
- Organizers:
- Viggo Andreasen, Roskilde, viggo@fatou.ruc.dk
- Andrea Pugliese, Universita di Trento, pugliese@science.unitn.it
Presented under the auspices of the Special Focus on Computational and Mathematical Epidemiology.
It has long been recognized that hosts and pathogens exert strong
selective forces on each other. Thus significant
coevolution between host and pathogens is to be expected, and with the
short generation time of many pathogens, evolution may occur over
observable time scales. In fact coevolution has been demonstrated in
many host-pathogen systems. For example in the classic gene-for-gene
systems, each new resistance gene that is introduced into a (cereal)
crop is matched within a few seasons by a virulence gene allowing the
(fungal) pathogen to overcome the resistance. The epidemiology of
several human diseases can be understood only in an evolutionary
context. For long periods Influenza A persistence relies on so-called
drift mutations that changes viral antigen sufficiently to allow for
reinfection of the same hosts while the evolutionary changes in HIV
are so fast that they are an integral part of the infection process
within the individual host. More recently it has been proposed that the strain structure in
malaria and RSV, among others, should be understood in an evolutionary
framework. This workshop will focus on evolutionary and
coevolutionary processes at the population level while selection
processes within the individual host will be discussed in other
workshops. The first models of host-pathogen coevolution were
applications of very general descriptions of coevolution. However,
with the increased interest in disease transmission dynamics the focus
has now moved to descriptions that explicitly utilize epidemic models
to describe the frequency dependent nature of the interaction. The mathematical methods for describing multiple
interacting types of the pathogen or the interaction between disease
and host genetics are in the process of being developed, but have not yet reached maturity. The
workshop will bring together mathematical researchers and
quantitatively oriented biologists and epidemiologists in the field to
discuss the development of mathematical methods as well as to explore
evolutionary and coevolutionary aspects of a number of host pathogen
systems (malaria, influenza, insect-bacculovirus, RSV).
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Document last modified on October 11, 2005.