About this Research Topic
Infectious diseases have been and continue to be one of the major causes of mortality around the world, posing significant health, social, and economic burdens. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), three infectious diseases (lower respiratory infections, diarrheal diseases and tuberculosis) are among the top ten causes of death. Infectious pathogens continue to emerge and re-emerge, underscoring considerable epidemic challenges to public health.
Evolution plays an important role in infectious diseases. Driven by constant arms race between microbial pathogens and their hosts, pathogens evolve mechanisms to evade host defense, develop drug resistance, adapt to host environment, compete with host microbiota, evolve virulence, and spread and transmit to new hosts. A better understanding of the key evolutionary features of infectious diseases such as pathogenicity, infectiousness, and transmissibility could result in effective prevention and control strategies.
Recent advances in high throughput omics technologies and big data analytical approaches have set the stage for a quantum leap in our understanding of the biology of pathogens and host-pathogen interactions. The goal of this Research Topic is to provide a forum for sharing ideas, tools and results among researchers from fields of evolutionary biology, infectious diseases, microbiology, genomics, and epidemiology. We would like to mainly focus on recent progress in using multidisciplinary approaches to the studies of the evolutionary mechanisms of pathogenesis, virulence, host immunity, population dynamics, and epidemiology.
We welcome the submission of Original Research papers, Review articles, Mini-Reviews, Technology & Code and Methods article types presenting advances in the evolution of infectious diseases. Relevant topics of interest to this Research Topic include (but are not limited to):
• Evolution and epidemiology of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases
• Evolution of pathogen genomes
• Population genetics and dynamics of pathogens
• Evolution of pathogenesis and virulence
• Evolutionary analysis of host-pathogen interactions
• Mathematical and computational modeling of evolutionary processes in infectious diseases
• Influence of microbiota on infectious diseases
Note that manuscripts focusing on COVID-19 are welcome to apply to our waiver program: https://frontiers.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_51IljifwFBXUzY1
Evolution plays an important role in infectious diseases. Driven by constant arms race between microbial pathogens and their hosts, pathogens evolve mechanisms to evade host defense, develop drug resistance, adapt to host environment, compete with host microbiota, evolve virulence, and spread and transmit to new hosts. A better understanding of the key evolutionary features of infectious diseases such as pathogenicity, infectiousness, and transmissibility could result in effective prevention and control strategies.
Recent advances in high throughput omics technologies and big data analytical approaches have set the stage for a quantum leap in our understanding of the biology of pathogens and host-pathogen interactions. The goal of this Research Topic is to provide a forum for sharing ideas, tools and results among researchers from fields of evolutionary biology, infectious diseases, microbiology, genomics, and epidemiology. We would like to mainly focus on recent progress in using multidisciplinary approaches to the studies of the evolutionary mechanisms of pathogenesis, virulence, host immunity, population dynamics, and epidemiology.
We welcome the submission of Original Research papers, Review articles, Mini-Reviews, Technology & Code and Methods article types presenting advances in the evolution of infectious diseases. Relevant topics of interest to this Research Topic include (but are not limited to):
• Evolution and epidemiology of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases
• Evolution of pathogen genomes
• Population genetics and dynamics of pathogens
• Evolution of pathogenesis and virulence
• Evolutionary analysis of host-pathogen interactions
• Mathematical and computational modeling of evolutionary processes in infectious diseases
• Influence of microbiota on infectious diseases
Note that manuscripts focusing on COVID-19 are welcome to apply to our waiver program: https://frontiers.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_51IljifwFBXUzY1
Keywords: Evolution, infectious diseases, infection, pathogenicity, virulence
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
