Evolution more complex than ‘survival of the fittest’ had us believe
If, soon, you can receive a better flu vaccine, you can thank some very fit yeast — and the eight scientists who have observed them. In a new paper in Nature, a Harvard-led team of researchers has pioneered a study that advances the field of organismic and evolutionary biology, but promises real-world results. The example of the flu vaccine illustrates the problem. With influenza, Michael Desai, professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology (OEB) and of physics, explained, “You need to predict what strains will be present next year or the vaccine will not be any good. “We have the sequence of all these flu strains, and we’re watching their evolution. What you should be able to do is look at how they’ve evolved in the past and be able to predict into the future what is going to win and what is going to lose. The problem is, we don’t know how...