Ecological determinants of altruism in prokaryote antivirus defense
Dmitry A Biba, Kira S Makarova, Yuri I Wolf, Levi Waldron, Eugene V Koonin, Nash D Rochman · 2025
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Description
Dmitry Biba and co-authors model in a 2025 study when single-celled life defends against viruses by suicide rather than immunity. Bacteria and archaea either clear infections with immune systems or run programmed death that takes the virus down with the cell. Modeling lytic infection, they find two master variables.
As viral pressure rises, immunity wins; as host population grows, suicide becomes the better buy. Suicide also pays at low infection rates per cell and immunity at high ones. Comparing genomes across many species matched the model's investment pattern. Altruism, they note, can sometimes be neutral and simply persist.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Dmitry A Biba, Kira S Makarova, Yuri I Wolf, Levi Waldron, Eugene V Koonin, Nash D Rochman |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2025 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 63 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |