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Rubella is a completely immunizing and mild infection in children. Understanding its behavior is of considerable public health importance because of Congenital Rubella Syndrome, which results from infection with rubella during early…
The classic Trivers-Willard hypothesis suggested the existence of means or conditions able to influence or control the sex of the offspring. Here I propose that mechanisms for the alteration of the gender of the offspring could possibly be…
We argue that immune system is an adaptive complex system. It is shown that it has emergent properties. Its network structure is of the small world network type. The network is of the threshold type, which helps in avoiding autoimmunity. It…
We consider the dynamics imposed by natural selection on the populations of two competing, sexually reproducing, haploid species. In this setting, the fitness of any genome varies over time due to the changing population mix of the…
We present models and computational results which indicate that the spatial and temporal regularity seen in Proteus mirabilis swarm-colony development is largely an expression of a sharp age of dedifferentiation in the cell cycle from…
Living systems regulate many aspects of their behavior through periodic oscillations of molecular concentrations, which function as `biochemical clocks.' These clocks are intrinsically subject to thermal fluctuations, so that the duration…
Recent theories from complexity science argue that complex dynamics are ubiquitous in social and economic systems. These claims emerge from the analysis of individually simple agents whose collective behavior is surprisingly complicated.…
Sexually reproducing populations with small number of individuals may go extinct by stochastic fluctuations in sex determination, causing all their members to become male or female in a generation. In this work we calculate the time to…
Many pathogens spread primarily via direct contact between infected and susceptible hosts. Thus, the patterns of contacts or contact network of a population fundamentally shapes the course of epidemics. While there is a robust and growing…
Mortality is an instrument of natural selection. Evolutionary motivated theories imply its irreversibility and life history dependence. This is inconsistent with mortality data for protected populations. Accurate analysis yields mortality…
The mechanisms underlying eco-evolutionary dynamics (the feedback between ecological and evolutionary processes) are often unknown. Here, we propose that classical theory from behavioral ecology can provide a greater understanding of the…
Pathogens drive changes in host immune systems that in turn exert pressure for pathogens to evolve. Quantifying and understanding this constant coevolutionary process has clear practical global health implications. Yet its relatively easier…
In this letter we study the full semi-conservative treatment of a model for the co-evolution of a virus and an adaptive immune system. Regions of viability are calculated for both conservatively and semi-conservatively replicating viruses…
We study the probabilities of evolution based on random mutations and natural selection. We conclude that evolution to multicellular eukaryots, or even prokaryots, is unlikely to be the result of only random mutations. Complex organisms…
Biological systems are modular, and this modularity affects the evolution of biological systems over time and in different environments. We here develop a theory for the dynamics of evolution in a rugged, modular fitness landscape. We show…
In recent years, personal health technologies have emerged that allow patients to collect a wide range of health-related data outside the clinic. These patient-generated data (PGD) reflect patients everyday behaviors including physical…
The incubation period of a disease is the time between an initiating pathologic event and the onset of symptoms. For typhoid fever, polio, measles, leukemia and many other diseases, the incubation period is highly variable. Some affected…
There is a pressing need to better understand how microbial populations respond to antimicrobial drugs, and to find mechanisms to possibly eradicate antimicrobial-resistant cells. The inactivation of antimicrobials by resistant microbes can…
The cell cycle duration is a variable cellular phenotype that underlies long-term population growth and age structures. By analyzing the stationary solutions of a branching process with heritable cell division times, we demonstrate…
Many illnesses are associated with an alteration of the immune system homeostasis due to any combination of factors, including exogenous bacterial insult, endogenous breakdown (e.g., development of a disease that results in immuno…