? ? The specific aim of this project is the completion of a book, """"""""Lives of the Infectious and the Infected: the biology of mutualistic and parasitic endosymbiosis"""""""", for publication by the University of Chicago Press. Symbiosis - the intimate association, or """"""""living together"""""""" between two or more species - is an important biological phenomenon. Including parasites and infectious disease within its purview, and with humans as hosts to an array of both benign and harmful microbes, it is also a phenomenon closely relevant to human health. Despite the volume of research on both harmful and benign infections of plants, animals, and humans, progress in the field has been slowed by the historic separation between the more clinically - oriented disciplines of epidemiology and parasitology and the generally-basic-research orientation of investigators of beneficial (""""""""mutualistic"""""""") associations .This separation- physical as much as disciplinary, with researchers in these fields often housed in different departments and different kinds of institutions- has reinforced simplistic stereotypes about the costs of parasites and pathogens to hosts , on the one hand, and the benefits of mutualistic microbes, on the other. But there is much to be learned from the real complexities of symbiotic associations, especially about those aspects of symbiotic life that do not respect the traditional divisions between harmful and beneficial associations. Most importantly, in obscuring the commonalities between parasitic and mutualistic symbiosis, this division has slowed the potential for investigators of harmful (parasitic, pathogenic) symbioses and researchers of symbiotic mutualisms to learn from each other. In its planned 13 chapters that focus on creation of a consistent, inclusive terminology in the field; the mechanics of infection, host-to-host transmission, metabolic interactions between hosts and symbionts; and a series of evolutionary questions, the book aims not only to synthesize the disparate literature of these fastmoving fields, but, in doing so, to foster new perspectives , new questions, and a broader understanding of the mechanisms, evolution, and paradoxes of symbiotic life. ? ? Among the wide range of symbiotic associations to be discussed, symbiotic associations in humans will provide key examples, including: malaria, tuberculosis, schistosomiasis, parasitic helminths, and pathogenic and commensal (as well as possibly mutualistic) intestinal bacteria . ? ? ?
| Saffo, Mary Beth; McCoy, Adam M; Rieken, Christopher et al. (2010) Nephromyces, a beneficial apicomplexan symbiont in marine animals. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 107:16190-5 |
