In a world of life and death, animals evolve to stay on top of predator and prey competition. Natural selection, or in other words, survival of the fittest, is Mother Nature’s way of weeding out the weak. Still, nature isn’t as simple as kill or be killed, and as genetics researcher Dr. Booker suggest, by understanding evolution and genetics, we can build a foundation that can lead to so much more.
We interviewed Dr. Booker on the 5th of Nov to talk about natural selection and recombination rates. While his research focused on mapping out mice DNA, the basis of his study extends to many real-life applications. He says,
“…when you go to the pharmacy, and you get your flu jab, they have predicted what the flu strain is going to be that winter… And there are lots of different ways of predicting it. What would be beneficial would be to try and take and incorporate information from actual the genetics and evolutionary history of flu.. (And see) in the past which ones have gone to be the really infectious ones in the winter…”
Meaning one way that genetics influences our daily life is annual flu and flu prevention, which is much more complicated than it sounds, involving processes like predicting virus strains and understand antimicrobial resistance.
Every year, people stock up on cough medicine, probiotics, natural remedies to colds, in preparation for the annual flu season, hoping that they won’t succumb to the sickness. Still, many fall ill with the flu and have to deal with fever, soreness and nausea, as well as further infectious complications. It’s surprising that even those who already had the flu can still contract it again.
You may wonder why you get sick every year as the flu spreads and the simple answer is that the virus responsible for your symptoms adapt and become resistant passing on their genes to the new generation that the current drugs cannot fight. These different generations are the different virus strains and are the reason why you need a flu shot every year. However, if we did not have a general grasp of genetics and evolution we would not be able to create effective drugs to fight off these flu viruses.
Drug Resistance (Understanding Evolution)
Evolution of viruses
Virus(Sciencemag)
Just like humans, viruses can also evolve. This is the reason behind flu outbreaks every year. But, what causes viruses to evolve? Recombination. This basically means swapping chunks of genetic material, so when two viruses attack the same host cell at the same time, a new virus is formed inside the cell which has a mix of genetic material that belongs to the previous two viruses. Thus, we have a new virus with unique properties. This was the reason behind the swine flu outbreak back in 2009. This virus was formed by the recombination of human, bird, and pig viruses.
Depicting Recombination. Source: viralzone
Therefore, since we understand how recombination works we can map out the genetic data of viruses and potentially predict new stains to create vaccines that will help prevent epidemics.
For more information on how evolution and genetics work check out our video:
And for more information on Dr. Booker’s research check out our podcast:
LINKS ABOUT THE FLU:
https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/10/28/does-the-flu-provide-better-immunity-than-a-flu-shot/
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cold-flu-difference/
Here are some sources for virus and recombination and how it helps viruses survive :
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3324781/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4019122/
https://www.khanacademy.org/science/biology/biology-of-viruses/virus-biology/a/evolution-of-viruses
by Group 3:Fatima Syed, Jagatjit Garha, Zhou Lu, Parth Garg
