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18 October 2007

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Microbial persistence in hosts is usually not accidental, but reflects a shared merging of the biology of two or more disparate life-forms. Martin Blaser and Denise Kirschner advance the hypothesis that there has been selection for both microbes and hosts to maximize the fitness of both parties to a life involving parasitism or symbiosis, conforming to an evolutionarily stable strategy. They develop a model that can account for the persistence of three very different types of interaction between microbes in humans — involving Helicobacter pylori, Salmonella typhi and Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

Hypothesis: The equilibria that allow bacterial persistence in human hosts

Martin J. Blaser & Denise Kirschner

doi:10.1038/nature06198

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