Preview of First Two Weeks

 

Introduction to Evolutionary Medicine. This First Session will be devoted to an overview of evolutionary medicine. Pictured above is Staphylococcus Aureus that has evolved resistance to methicillin or MRSA.

A version from last year’s first lecture is here for preview: introductory-lecture

Click here to get the second lecture slides:sickle-cell-handout

The syllabus is available in the link at the top of this page.

Readings for the each weeks lecture will be listed in the syllabus. Before each week there will be a post in this blog that lists the readings and discussion points for that topic.

Several readings for the first month are here for those students that want to get a jump on the course are here:

Evolution and the Origin of Disease. Nesse, RM. Scientific American November 1998: 86-93.

3. Two Lessons from the Interface of Genetics and Medicine. Allison A. Genetics 166: 1591–1599 (April 2004) (Read page 1-5)
Three High Altitude Peoples, Three Adaptations to Thin Air. Hillary Mayell. National Geographic News. February 25, 2004.

Two routes to functional adaptation: Tibetan and Andean high altitude natives. Beall CM. PNAS May 20071:suppl 1(8655-8660).

Office Hours: for Dr. Alcock are by appointment only. He may be contacted at 265-1711 ext 2621 or with the email provided in class.

2009 Evolutionary Medicine Course

The 2009 evolutionary medicine course at the University of New Mexico is shaping up to be the best yet. This course is for undergraduate and graduate students in biology and anthropology and is also open to medical students. The course is now scheduled for tuesday and thursday from 4:00pm to 5:15. Twice weekly sessions will alternate between lectures, critiques, and discussions. Please check back soon for the tentative schedule for the class.

 

Joe Alcock MD

Melissa Franklin MS

Reproductive Effort Tradeoffs and Health

As promised, I am posting final presentations in the Evolutionary Medicine Course. This is Melissa Franklin’s work on tradeoffs, sex steroids, resource allocation, and immune defense.reproductive tradeoff

Sperm, Health, and Intelligence

This article from The Economist has a reference to work on sperm quality, overall health, and intelligence!

Article link

 

Final Projects

Good Job Final Project Presenters!

Thus far, the topics that have been presented have been terrific. I want to encourage all the students to keep up the good work.

Good presentations so far include the following elements:

1) A description of a disease or a condition that affects human health. 2a) Review or proposal of a disease hypothesis that incorporates an evolutionary point of view (adaptationist, historical) and/or alternative hypotheses (e.g epiphenomenon, null hypothesis, non-adaptationist). This might take the form of a “why” question of ultimate causation. 2b) Or, a comparison of disease therapies from an evolutionary point of view. 3) Ideally, predictions of hypotheses can be presented, or data if evidence exists. 4) Speculations about the implications of a hypothesis. If you present a idea that you do not agree with, give the reasons why or why an alternative is preferred.

The remainder will be limited to 15 minutes with a minute or two for questions. Please practice your presentation to make sure it will fit into that time restriction.

Thanks to everyone who has put so much work into their presentations so far. Please email me at my gmail account if you have any questions about the presentations, or want me to preview an outline of your talk. I would be more than happy to answer questions by email or in person by appointment.

Good luck!

Evolution of Aging

On monday, we will discuss the following hypotheses of aging:

Antagonistic Pleiotropy is the concept that a gene for survival or a gene that promotes
reproduction early can be selected for even if it kills you at a later
age. So selection favors juvenile survival at the expense of old age survival. This hypothesis recognizes that most traits have both costs and benefits, and are tradeoffs. The tradeoff in antagonistic pleiotropy is improved health in youth, but disease in old age.

Declining power of selection hypothesis of aging: Genes for maintenance and repair of the body are selected for more strongly at early ages (pre-reproduction) than after reproductive
age. For this: imagine a gene mutation that prevents cancer at age 10 and another gene mutation that prevents cancer at age 100. The gene that prevents cancer at age 100 will not have any effect most of the time because most people are dead by age 100 (this remains true even if you take senescence out of the equation – random accidents will claim many lives). The gene that affects 10 year olds is more likely to be expressed and have a benefit simply because most people are alive at age 10. Therefore the old-age gene will be invisible to natural selection, the 10 year old gene will be subject to positive selection.

Disposable Soma hypothesis; This hypothesis recognizes that the nonreproductive part of the body (the soma) exists only to support the reproductive part of the body. At any moment in time an adult can devote energy to the maintenance of the body or to reproduction. Put simply, after successful reproduction, the soma is “disposable”, and genes are passed on. This tradeoff is vividly illustrated in adult salmon, which appear to do all their aging at once, immediately after a single reproductive effort. In many animals, bearing offspring shortens lifespan. There is some evidence of this in humans too.

Optional readings for the weekend:

age-old-question

understanding-aging

There is no writing project due.Keep working on your final projects. Congratulations to those who have already presented their topics. Excellent work so far!! And good luck to those getting ready to present this upcoming week.

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Update!

Here is the handout of slides for mondays lecture:aging

Diet Lecture Slides & Handout

The lecture will be an overview of some evolutionary considerations of food. These include the concept of the paleolithic diet, which proposes that humans are healthiest when eating what our stone age ancestors ate. We will explore a variety of concepts through the lens of a Thanksgiving meal.

The following links contain the same information. If you want to print out the file, use the printer friendly link below:

Printer friendly handout:diethandout

Color slides best for viewing on your computer:dietslides

This link describes some of the differences between eating wild turkey (the paleolithic variety) and “broad-breasted white”, the most common bird found in grocery stores: About a Bird

Another good read is this recent New York Times article about disappointing results of multiple vitamin trials: Vitamin

Next weeks topic: Diet

We are going to focus on diet next week. We have already talked about trans fats, and I think we have said enough about it already. Diet, as you know, is a huge topic, with far more information that we can cover in one week. But we will talk about lactose intolerance, spices, and maybe carbohydrates. 

There will be no writing project for next week, since most of you are working hard on your presentations!

I will post the lecture handout when it is ready.

Reading and Slides for 11/17/08

Here is a preview of the slides for this monday’s talk:

Evolution of Diabetes

This is an extra reading that I did not include in the original list. Dr. Kuzawa wrote this chapter for a new book “Evolutionary Anthropology”. This work explains his hypothesis about the fixed needs of the brain and the role of blood glucose in stressed infants.

kuzawa-chapter-for-evolutionary-anthropology

This one is not on eReserve. Email me if you are unable to download it here.

Also, in case you missed it. Evolutionary medicine made the New York Times with a mention of David Haig, the Harvard scientist who wrote the reading on reproductive conflict:

New York Times article

Diabetes and Development

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) and diabetes are perhaps the most consequential diseases in America in terms of deaths, economic impacts, and effects on quality of life. Despite intensive efforts and millions of dollars worth of studies, our understanding of CVD and diabetes remains incomplete.

The fine work of Chris Kuzawa from Northwestern University shows how environmental influences during development can cause diabetes. Please complete the reading prior to class. It will also be hard to do the writing project without first doing the reading.

Reading: also on eReserve

1. Kuzawa – Diabetes and Development

Writing project:

There appears to be switch activated in underweight babies that leads to diabetes later in life. Early on, many underweight babies are insulin resistant. Insulin resistance is a pre-diabetic state.  In these small babies, less glucose gets metabolized by muscle tissue. As a result, less energy is devoted to growth and building muscles and bones. On the flip side, more glucose is available for other uses ‐ like the brain and perhaps white blood cells. 

Kuzawa proposes that because humans have particularly large brains (recall Dr. Trevathan’s lecture) glucose gets diverted to the brain from the rest of the body in times of stress. In this view, insulin resistance feeds the brain.

1) Try answering this:  What might be the consequence of slower growth, and higher blood sugar in these infants? Are there situations in which more energy available to the brain or immune system might be helpful? 

2) If that is too tough, try this: Large brains appear to have benefits and costs to the developing baby. Try to name three downsides to having a very large brain in an infant. What might be the benefit?

3) Extreme extra credit. Can genetic conflict (recall two lectures ago) have something to do with insulin resistance in an infant?