ISCBacademy
Modeling Microbe Evolution Due to Immune System Pressure
by Nico Pfeifer (University of Tübingen)
Today - February 25, 2025, at 3:00 PM CET
Microbes are under constant evolutionary pressure from their environment, with the immune system playing a significant role in shaping their adaptation strategies. Viruses, in particular, must evolve to evade immune responses, enabling them to establish persistent
infections. A well-studied example is HIV, where viral adaptation to the host's immune system has been extensively modeled using computational methods.
In this talk, Nico Pfeifer will explore the computational approaches developed to model viral adaptation and their implications for understanding microbe evolution under immune pressure. The session will cover:
- Early computational models of HIV immune adaptation [1]
- Recent advances in Bayesian modeling for predicting viral evolution [2]
- The impact of founder effects on adaptation predictions
- Applications beyond viruses, including resistance prediction for Mycobacterium tuberculosis
These insights not only enhance our understanding of viral evolution but also inform strategies for tackling antimicrobial resistance and improving predictive models for microbial adaptation.
[1] Carlson, J., Du, V., Pfeifer,
N. et al. Impact of pre-adapted HIV transmission. Nat Med 22, 606–613 (2016).
[2] Hake, A., Germann, A.,
de Beer, C. et al. Insights to HIV-1 coreceptor usage by estimating HLA adaptation with Bayesian generalized linear mixed models, PLOS Computational Biology, 19(12): e1010355 (2023).