How, I thought, could we hope to understand the human immune system without knowing how it evolved, and without comparing our strategies to those of very different animals?
Happily, at the time I was asking those questions, other people were studying them. Now, 24 years later, we're learning some amazing things.
This is new science. Until today I would have said mosquitoes mostly tolerated the human pathogens they carry ...
Bug vs. bug: How do mosquitoes survive deadly viruses unscathed?: Scientific American BlogI take exception to the word "primitive" in the first paragraph. Why would there be anything "primitive" about the immune system of the modern mosquito. They've been evolving for a long time ...
Why can mosquitoes carry deadly viruses without succumbing to them and live on to give humans West Nile, dengue fever, and a host of other fatal illnesses. According to new research, the insects' primitive immune systems recognize that the viruses are dangerous and slice the microbes' genetic material into harmless pieces....
... The prevailing theory had been that these viruses and mosquitoes lived in harmony. But entomologists found quite the opposite to be true. "We were shocked," lead author Kevin Myles told ScientificAmerican.com, "This had long been viewed as a very benign relationship."...
No comments:
Post a Comment