Evolutionary biology of bacterial and fungal pathogens

This volume introduces clinical microbiologists, infectious disease specialists, epidemiologists, medical professionals, and public health researchers to the importance and influence of evolutionary outcomes. Humans experience countless interactions with the microbial world; our biology is intertwined with the biology of microbes. Understanding this evolutionary reality provides a powerful tool to integrate and synthesize a huge amount of heterogeneous information from a variety of fields studying human biology. The volume's 49 chapters cover the relationship between microbial evolution and human biology from many perspectives. The first section illustrates the evolutionary biology of microbial-human interactions, considering the effect of human-driven changes. The second section analyzes evolutionary genetics involved in microbial variation and adaptation, from microbial genome to mobile elements as plasmids or integrons. The third section deals with evolutionary microbial responses to antibiotics, the major anthropogenic factor altering our interactions with microbes. Finally, the last three sections systematically analyze the evolution of pathogenesis in gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria, and fungi. These chapters convey the impact of evolution on microbe-human interactions, and how that influences infectious diseases. This information will stimulate an evolutionary orientation in the daily interpretation of facts that are observed in the laboratory and the hospital. Read more...