Evolution in Immune Systems
| Date/Time: | Wednesday, 06 Mar 2013 at 8:00 pm |
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| Location: | Great Hall, Memorial Union |
| Cost: | Free |
| Contact: | |
| Phone: | 515-294-9934 |
| Channel: | Lecture Series |
| Categories: | Lectures Student activities |
| Actions: | Download iCal/vCal | Email Reminder |
Michael Deem researches Newton's laws of biology, the theory of personalized critical care, physical theories of pathogen evolution, and the structure of zeolites. He has shown that the speed at which life evolves is constantly increasing because of horizontal gene transfer and created a database of more than 4 million possible molecular configurations for zeolites. He is the John W. Cox Professor in Bioengineering and a professor of physics & astronomy at Rice University.
The influenza virus has a high evolution rate, which makes designing the annual flu vaccine challenging. A mismatch between the strain in the vaccine and the strain infecting the public leads to a less effective vaccine and to broader infection in the population. A precise measure of how differently the immune system perceives the vaccine and virus enables a better design of the flu shot. I will discuss a method to predict vaccine efficacy that we have developed, which is at least as predictive as, and sometimes more so than, animal model studies. Interestingly, the immune system typically recognizes the H1N1 strain of the flu to a greater degree than it does the H3N2 strain, leading to better flu shots for H1N1 than H3N2. The evolution rate of H1N1 is also greater than that of H3N2, presumably due to greater pressure on the virus to evolve. I will also discuss a technique we have developed for early detection of new flu strains. I will show that this method is able to detect new versions of the flu earlier than the present approaches used by health authorities. Finally, I will discuss evolution with the immune system of bacteria, CRISPR.