Can genetic parasites alter interactions between microbes and hosts?

Researchers from the Max Planck Institutes (MPI) for Evolutionary Biology in Plön and for Biology in Tübingen have made significant progress in understanding the evolution of interactions between plants and microbes. The study focusses on Pseudomonas syringae, a globally distributed plant pathogen, and in this instance the harm done to kiwifruit production.   more

New Insights: PRDM9 and its role in Hybrid Sterility and Meiotic Recombination in Wild Mice

Infertility is a widespread health issue affecting both male and female reproductive organs. Fertility, crucial for conception and the development of healthy children, depends on normal eggs and sperm produced through meiotic cell division. Understanding the regulating mechanisms of these processes is critical, to unravel the mystery of infertility and chromosome abnormalities. PRDM9 plays an important role in regulating meiotic recombination but also influences hybrid sterility in wild mice. New research findings from the Meiotic Recombination and Genome Instability Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön, in collaboration with the Group of Professor Jiří Forejt, at the Institute of Molecular Mouse Genetics of the Czech Academy of Sciences, show that hybrid sterility is oligogenetically controlled by PRDM9 even, in wild mice, and therefore outside the laboratory model. more

New Insights into the Dynamics of Microbial Communities

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön, within the Department of Theoretical Biology, characterized a recently discovered dynamical regime of microbial communities and used it to explain empirical patterns of marine plankton. There, strong and diverse interactions, combined with weak dispersal, fuel a continuous turnover of the small set of very abundant species, such that success is ephemeral and every species is equivalent in alternating between rarity and dominance. more

Symposium for new paths in evolutionary medicine

Interdisciplinary exchange between Kiel University Medicine and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön (MPI) more

In endemic settings, behavioral adjustments can fully compensate increasing infection risk

To reduce the transmission during the COVID-19 pandemic and to lower infection rates, so-called non-pharmaceutical intervention (NPI) measures such as mask-wearing and social distancing were prescribed in many regions of the world. These measures have since been loosened, and compliance with them is largely left up to each individual. But how can such individual decision-making affect a long-term infection levels? Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, USA and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön, Germany, are investigating this question in a recently published study. more

Mathematical model of tumor heterogeneity and phenotype switching: A detailed analysis.

The effect of the phenotypic plasticity of cancer cells and how to exploit it more

Theoretical assessment of persistence and adaptation in weeds with complex life cycles

Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön and the University of Würzburg present a new mathematical model on population dynamics and the evolution of herbicide resistance in perennial weeds. more

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