Microbial Evolutionary Medicine – from theory to clinical practice

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1 Langone Medical Center, New York University, New York City, New York, United States
2 The Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
3 Department of Biological Sciences, University of Montreal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
4 VU University Medical Center, VU University Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
5 Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences, University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands
6 Laboratory of Genetics, Wageningen University, Wageningen, Netherlands
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.26969v1
Published
Accepted
Subject Areas
Ecology, Evolutionary Studies, Genomics, Infectious Diseases, Translational Medicine
Keywords
Evolutionary medicine, Infectious disease, Antibiotic resistance, Microbiome
Copyright
© 2018 Andersen et al.
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Andersen SB, Shapiro BJ, Vandenbroucke-Grauls C, de Vos MGJ. 2018. Microbial Evolutionary Medicine – from theory to clinical practice. PeerJ Preprints 6:e26969v1

Abstract

Bacteria and other microbes play a crucial role in human health and disease. Medicine and clinical microbiology have traditionally attempted to identify the etiological agents that causes disease, and how to eliminate them. Yet this traditional paradigm is becoming inadequate for dealing with a changing disease landscape. Major challenges to human health are noncommunicable chronic diseases, often driven by altered immunity and inflammation, and persistent communicable infections whose agents harbor antibiotic resistance. It is increasingly recognized that microbe-microbe interactions, as well as human-microbe interactions are important. Here, we review the “Evolutionary Medicine” framework to study how microbial communities influence human health. This approach aims to predict and manipulate microbial influences on human health by integrating ecology, evolutionary biology, microbiology, bioinformatics and clinical expertise. We focus on the potential promise of evolutionary medicine to address three key challenges: 1) detecting microbial transmission; 2) predicting antimicrobial resistance; 3) understanding microbe-microbe and human-microbe interactions in health and disease, in the context of the microbiome.

Author Comment

Here, we review the “Evolutionary Medicine” framework to study how microbial communities influence human health. This is a preprint submission to PeerJ and the manuscript is submitted to a peer reviewed journal. Consortium who contributed to this review by participating in the Lorentz Center Workshop on Darwinian Microbial Medicine August 2017, and commenting on the manuscript:

Alan McNally (IMI Birmingham, UK), Aldert Zomer (University Utrecht, NL), Ashleigh Griffin (Oxford University, UK), Bastian Hornung (Leiden University, NL), Benno ter Kuile (University of Amsterdam, NL), Constance Schultsz (AMC-UVA, NL), Craig MacLean (Oxford University, UK), Doris van Bergeijk (Leiden University, NL), Dries Budding (VUmc, NL), Fernanda Paganelli (UMC Utrecht, NL), Jakob A. Møller-Jensen (SDU, DK), Jakob Stokholm (COPSAC, DK), Jennifer Gardy (University British Columbia, CA), Jennifer Rohn (Cambridge, UK), Jeroen Geurtsen (Janssen Pharmaceuticals, NL), Kimberly Kline (Nanyang Technical University, SG), Libusha Kelly (Albert Einstein College of Medicine, USA), Luca Freschi (Harvard University, USA), Maha Farhat (Harvard University, USA), Marceline Tutu van Furth (VU, NL), Mathieu Groussin (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA), Mathilde Poyet (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA), Melanie Ghoul (Oxford University, UK), Micaela Martinez (Columbia University, USA), Michael Byam (Harvard University, USA), Nicole Vega (Emory University, USA), Niels Frimodt-Møller (Rigshospitalet, DK), Peter van Baarlen (Wageningen University, NL), Petra Wolffs (Maastricht University, NL), Rasmus Lykke Marvig (Rigshospitalet, DK), Victoria Janes (AMC-UVA, NL), Wiep Klaas Smits (Leiden University, NL), Willem van Schaik (IMI Birmingham, UK) and Sébastien Matamoros (AMC-UVA, NL).