Agenda/Schedule
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Aging and Adaptation in Infectious Diseases
From Complex Time
Category: Application Area Application Area: Infectious Diseases
Date/Time: July 26, 2018 - July 28, 2018
Location: Santa Fe Institute (Noyce Conference Room)
Organizers
Jean Carlson (UCSB)
Mercedes Pascual (Univ. Chicago)
Audio files
AAA Infectious Disease Organizer Interview.mp3 (x)
Attendees
Phil Arevalo (Univ. Chicago)
Arup K. Charaborty (MIT)
Sarah Cobey (Univ. Chicago)
Rob DeBoer (Utrecht Univ./SFI)
Andrew P. Dobson (Princeton)
Susan Fitzpatrick (JSMF)
Andrea L. Graham (Princeton)
Ruian Ke (LANL)
Chris Kempes (SFI)
Katia Koelle (Emory Univ.)
Micaela Martinez (Columbia Univ.)
Pamela Martinez (Harvard)
Alan Perelson (LANL/SFI)
David Schneider (Stanford)
Jenny Tung (Duke Univ.)
Paul Turner (Yale)
Marcos Viera (Univ. Chicago)
Shenshen Wang (UCLA)
Noah K. Whiteman (UC Berkeley)
Meeting Synopsis
This working group explores the role of aging and adaptation in infectious diseases operating over multiple organizational and temporal scales. General areas include immune system dynamics and age, host-pathogen co-adaptation in chronic vs. acute infections, pathogen antigenic diversity and endemism, effects of age on infectious diseases in human and nonhuman hosts. Overarching themes include memory, (co)adaptation, diversity, feedback, robustness and fragility. We are interested in aging and biological time as reflecting a loss of robustness in the face of infection at the level of individuals but also populations. We are also interested in aging of the pathogen in relation to its ability to persist and withstand intervention efforts. This meeting brings together a select group of scientists from a range of backgrounds to define novel questions, facilitate potential collaborations, and catalyze new and transformative research in this area. Development of methods that combine big data, experiments, theory, and computation with predictive and therapeutic applications across disciplines is of particular interest.
Additional Meeting Information
Overview and rationale[edit source]
Time and age in standard dynamical systems for infectious diseases are treated as simple clocks that run at a constant rate. Thus, standard epidemiological models that incorporate host age consider structured populations and rely on partial differential equations in which the derivative of age relative to time is simply a constant. By contrast, ‘complex’ time in infectious disease dynamics is intimately related to the different trajectories that either individuals or populations can follow and which ultimately determine the outcome of infection, its susceptibility to intervention, and the likelihood of critical failure. Pieces of what determines these trajectories have been investigated, in relation to the immune system, pathogens’ evolution and their escape from the host’s acquired memory, as well as the coadaptation of both. A synthesis of these efforts and a general theory that places aging at its center is still missing.
We have been purposefully vague so far on whose age we are considering. Age of the host is only one possibility. There is also the age of first infection and that of pathogen lineages and their persistence through time. Another age is that of infection in a population, from the short duration of epidemics to the long-lasting persistence of endemic diseases. All these quantities are inter-related, in some cases in ways we already understand. What is missing is a deeper understanding and synthesis of the variable outcomes and temporal trajectories of disease at different levels of organization. Some individuals may experience fatal failure to recover from disease, others may tolerate infection and exhibit a robust path to recovery. In endemic locations, under high transmission, a large reservoir of asymptomatic infection can lead to persistence of the pathogen and its resilience to intervention. The same disease under low transmission will be epidemic and possibly easier to eliminate.
At the center of these outcomes are both the acquisition of information by the immune system and the antigenic escape of pathogens. Thus, information, diversity and adaptation are central themes influencing the outcome of disease and intervention in relation to age. They are also common themes with other efforts of the JSMF initiative at SFI.
Meeting organization[edit source]
The first two days of the working group each begin with a general discussion of broad themes and goals associated with the working group and the JSMF/SFI Aging and the Arrow of Time initiative followed by participant introductions by way of research presentations. The presentations are broken into complementary topical sessions which include (i) immune system dynamics and age, (ii) viral evolution and therapies (sessions A and B) (iii) host-pathogen (co)adaptation, diversification, and age, and (iv) complex time, environment, and aging in epidemiology.
Each topical session will consist of 30-minute talks at a high enough level that everyone can follow. A 30-minute discussion session is scheduled at the end of each topical session, designed to explore themes and challenges arising in the session.
The second day concludes with a discussion of emerging themes and opportunities for transformative research. The working group will identify novel questions for further development by 3-4 breakout groups on day three, designed to identify opportunities for future research and collaboration. The breakout groups will report back with summary presentations at the conclusion of the final day of the meeting.
Abstracts by Presenters
Micaela Martinez (Columbia Univ.) - Session IV: Complex Rhythms, environment, and aging in epidemiology[edit source]
The meeting is composed of expert disease dynamicsmodelers and disease ecologists; thus, my presentation will be focused on chronobiology. Specifically, I will review new data regarding circadian and circannual rhythms in humans and mouse models.
Andrew P. Dobson (Princeton) - Session IV: Complex Rhythms, environment, and aging in epidemiology[edit source]
Assemble a talk that describes non-human examples of how host exposure and response to pathogens and disease changes with age.
Describe ways of quantifying age-dependent changes in exposure.
Discuss possible dynamic consequences in variation in duration of incubation and infectivity with age.
Describe models for parasitic nematodes of different sizes living as a community of worms in hosts of different sizes.
Illustrate recent work with Ian Hatton on body size scaling of vital rates from Algae to Elephants - use this to suggest we could use this scaling for models of immune system in mammals (from bats and mice to elephants and whales).
Post-meeting Summary by Organizer[edit source]
Coming Soon.
Additional Post-meeting Summary by Organizer
- What was the big question or idea the meeting was designed to explore?
- Coming Soon.
- What was the goal of the meeting?
- Coming Soon.
- What was the single most important outcome of the meeting?
- Coming Soon.
- What disciplines/fields were represented at the meeting?
- Coming Soon.
- What one or two new research direction(s) did the meeting suggest?
- Coming Soon.
- What was the most interesting thing said during the meeting, and who said it?
- Coming Soon.
- What idea from the meeting is likely to be most impactful for science?
- Coming Soon.
- What idea from the meeting is potentially translatable into an application?
- Coming Soon.
- What new method/technology/algorithm/etc. resulted (or may result) from this meeting?
- Coming Soon.
A narrative summary of the meeting
Coming Soon.Outcomes that might emerge from the meeting
Coming Soon.Coming Soon.
Post-meeting Reflection by Presenter
Andrew P. Dobson (Princeton) - Session IV: Complex Rhythms, environment, and aging in epidemiology Link to the source page[edit source]
Really interesting set of talks that blended into a good set of discussions on projects the group could work on. There will be a big emphasis on human immunity and how it first gains 'experience' and then breaks down with age.
I'm likely to focus my attention on developing body sized scaled models for immune system. These could be both fairly simple models for immunity mainly capturing differences between Type I and Type II immunity, but then expanding this to take Jean Carlson's model for human immunity and rescale elements of this with host body size and BMR.
Post-meeting Reflection by Non-presenting Attendees
Reference Materials by Presenting Attendees[edit source]
Mercedes Pascual (Univ. Chicago) - Session I: Immune System Dynamics and Age, Session III: Host Pathogen (co)Adaptation, Diversification, and Age[edit source]
| Title | Author name | Source name | Year | Citation count From Scopus. Refreshed every 5 days. | Page views | Related file |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Networks of genetic similarity reveal non-neutral processes shape strain structure in Plasmodium falciparum | Qixin He, Shai Pilosof, Kathryn E. Tiedje, Shazia Ruybal-Pesántez, Yael Artzy-Randrup, Edward B. Baskerville, Karen P. Day, Mercedes Pascual | Nature Communications | 2018 | 7 | 8 | |
| Evidence of strain structure in Plasmodium falciparum var gene repertoires in children from Gabon, West Africa | 0 | 8 |
Jenny Tung (Duke Univ.) - Session IV: Complex Rhythms, environment, and aging in epidemiology[edit source]
| Title | Author name | Source name | Year | Citation count From Scopus. Refreshed every 5 days. | Page views | Related file |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Social status alters immune regulation and response to infection in macaques | Noah Snyder-Mackler, Joaquín Sanz, Jordan N. Kohn, Jessica F. Brinkworth, Shauna Morrow, Amanda O. Shaver, Jean Christophe Grenier, Roger Pique-Regi, Zachary P. Johnson, Mark E. Wilson, Luis B. Barreiro, Jenny Tung | Science | 2016 | 105 | 25 |
Reference Materials by Non-presenting Attendees
