Journal
CELL CYCLE
Volume 13, Issue 19, Pages 3083-3088Publisher
TAYLOR & FRANCIS INC
DOI: 10.4161/15384101.2014.949496
Keywords
programmed cell death; host-parasite arms race; viruses; evolution of multicellularity; AI; abortive infection; PCD; programmed cell death; TA; toxin-antitoxin
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Funding
- intramural funds of the US Department of Health and Human Services
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Unicellular eukaryotes and most prokaryotes possess distinct mechanisms of programmed cell death (PCD). How an altruistic trait, such as PCD, could evolve in unicellular organisms? To address this question, we developed a mathematical model of the virus-host co-evolution that involves interaction between immunity, PCD and cellular aggregation. Analysis of the parameter space of this model shows that under high virus load and imperfect immunity, joint evolution of cell aggregation and PCD is the optimal evolutionary strategy. Given the abundance of viruses in diverse habitats and the wide spread of PCD in most organisms, these findings imply that multiple instances of the emergence of multicellularity and its essential attribute, PCD, could have been driven, at least in part, by the virus-host arms race.
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