The Day of Immunology 2009

✍ Scribed by Stefan H. E. Kaufmann; Astrid Hahner

• Book ID: 102825504
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 556 KB
• Volume: 39
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0014-2980
• DOI: 10.1002/eji.200990013

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

The year 2009 sees the bicentennial of Darwin's birth and the sesquicentennial of his major publication On the Origin of Species. Thus, 2009 will witness numerous attempts to interpret scientific results from an evolutionary standpoint. For immunology, this makes a lot of sense. The immune response has evolved as a countermeasure to nature's most evolution‐prone organisms – the microbes. The generation times of many microbes are in the range of minutes to hours, hence a million times faster than humans. Owing to their rapid generation times, microbes are best equipped to follow Darwinian evolution relying on random mutation followed by selection of the fittest.