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Parasite virulence and host resistance are variables that strongly impact a pathogen's ability to replicate and be distributed to many hosts. Parasite virulence is the level of harm a host endures due to a virus, bacteria, or parasite. [1] The way a host lives contributes heavily to how their body will react to pathogens.
A parasite may evolve to become less harmful for its host or a host may evolve to cope with the unavoidable presence of a parasite—to the point that the parasite's absence causes the host harm. For example, although animals parasitised by worms are often clearly harmed, such infections may also reduce the prevalence and effects of autoimmune ...
Bacteria are prokaryotic microorganisms that can either have a bacilli, spirilli, or cocci shape and measure between 0.5-20 micrometers. They were one of the first living cells to evolve [9] and have spread to inhabit a variety of different habitats including hydrothermal vents, glacial rocks, and other organisms.
Host–parasite coevolution is a special case of coevolution, where a host and a parasite continually adapt to each other. This can create an evolutionary arms race between them. A more benign possibility is of an evolutionary trade-off between transmission and virulence in the parasite, as if it kills its host too quickly, the parasite will ...
The principal forces of evolution in prokaryotes and their effects on archaeal and bacterial genomes. The horizontal line shows archaeal and bacterial genome size on a logarithmic scale (in megabase pairs) and the approximate corresponding number of genes (in parentheses).The effects of the main forces of prokaryotic genome evolution are denoted by triangles that are positioned, roughly, over ...
For these reasons, bacteriophages (i.e. viruses that infect bacteria) are especially favored by experimental evolutionary biologists. Bacteriophages, and microbial organisms, can be frozen in stasis, facilitating comparison of evolved strains to ancestors. Additionally, microbes are especially labile from a molecular biologic perspective.
Bites from insects in the family Reduviidae (assassin bugs) can, via a parasite, infect humans with the trypanosomal Chagas disease, which can insert its DNA into the human genome. [37] It has been suggested that lateral gene transfer to humans from bacteria may play a role in cancer. [38]
Legionella pneumophila, the species of intracellular bacteria parasite responsible for Legionnaire's disease, has been seen to differentiate within a developmentally diverse network. [8] The genera Corynebacterium [ 9 ] and Coccobacillus [ 10 ] have been designated as a pleomorphic genera, diphtheroid Bacilli have been classified as pleomorphic ...