Title: In Health and In Sickness: Why Evolutionary Thinking is Indispensable in Understanding the Dynamics of Host-Pathogen Interactions and Immune Strategies?

Abstract:

Since pathogens are ubiquitous, an effective immune system is critical for the host to survive pathogenic challenges. However, understanding how such an immune system evolves and influences the outcome of host-pathogen interactions is challenging because of its complex interactions with factors as diverse as various life-history trade-offs, physiological effects, and metabolic changes to the population’s history with pathogens and ecosystems. For example, since immune responses are cytotoxic, damaging DNA, cells and organs, how could hosts still evolve efficiently against pathogens? Also, how the evolvability of immunity and pathogen resistance is modulated by environmental variations or life-history conditions that impose added physiological costs and energetic burdens on the hosts. Finally, how do these impacts translate from organisms to molecular levels? In my talk, I will briefly discuss how these overarching questions have motivated me to build a unique multidisciplinary research program in the Indian research ecosystem to identify various costs and contexts of immunity and host-pathogen interactions that could drive natural variation in organismal health and pathogen resistance.