When life forms invade new habitats or experience sudden environmental changes, they can find themselves in a race between adapting to the new conditions or going extinct. Particular challenges can arise from the hierarchical organization of life: evolutionary changes that help an organism at one scale of biological organization may hurt it at another. For example, faster reproduction of viruses within a host may cause rapid death and hence reduce transmission to other hosts. This project will develop new theory for evolutionary escape with an emphasis on adaptation across multiple scales. The research will focus on emerging viruses such as influenza or HIV, and will develop a framework to understand why some viruses go extinct after they jump into humans from their animal reservoirs, while others adapt to human hosts and start pandemics. The results will also be applicable to problems ranging from antibiotic-resistant bacteria to tumor growth to pesticide-resistant weeds or insects.
Beyond its applications to important problems such as pathogen emergence and cancer, this project will have many direct benefits to society. Undergraduate students from under-represented groups will gain research experience through summer internships and term projects. Graduate and postdoctoral students will receive inter-disciplinary training and career mentorship. Concepts from this project will be incorporated into several new undergraduate courses and into a textbook on calculus and modeling in the life sciences. Graduate students in Africa will be taught and mentored in short-courses and associated research projects. Finally, insights into viral evolution will be shared with public health researchers and policy-makers via existing collaborations and participation in NIH-sponsored infectious disease working groups.
