Integrative and Comparative Biology Advance Access published online on June 1, 2007
Integrative and Comparative Biology, doi:10.1093/icb/icm006
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Host resource supplies influence the dynamics and outcome of infectious disease
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045
Correspondence: 1E-mail: vsmith{at}ku.edu
Pathogens and their host organisms share a wide range of resource needs that are required to support normal metabolism and growth. Because the development of infectious disease on or within the host involves the processes of invasion and resource consumption, competition for growth-limiting resources potentially may occur between pathogens and cellular or sub-cellular components of the host ecosystem. Examples from the plant, animal, and microbiological literature provide unambiguous evidence that external resource supplies to the host organism can have profound effects on the outcome of infection by a broad diversity of bacterial, fungal, metazoan, protozoan, and viral pathogens.
From the symposium "Ecology and Evolution of Disease Dynamics" presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, Phoenix, Arizona, USA, January 37, 2007.