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Evolution of immunity

Guest Editors

Pedro José Esteves, PhD, University of Porto, Portugal
Aris Katzourakis, PhD, University of Oxford, UK
Pedro Vale, PhD, University of Edinburgh, UK

BMC Biology called for submissions to our Collection on Evolution of immunity. Evolution of immunity happens on many timescales and encompasses the development of both the innate and adaptive immune systems. For this Collection, we welcomed immunity-related submissions with high impact from diverse research fields including evolutionary biology, genetics, and ecology. 

New Content ItemThis Collection supports and amplifies research related to SDG 3: Good Health and Well-Being.

Meet the Guest Editors

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Pedro José Esteves, PhD, BIOPOLIS-CIBIO, University of Porto, CITS-CESPU, Portugal

Pedro J. Esteves graduated with a degree in Biology from the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto (FCUP) in 1996 and earned his PhD there in 2003. In 2005, he established his own research group on Genetic aspects of Host-Parasite Interactions, which has evolved into the Immunity and Emerging Diseases group at BIOPOLIS-CIBIO. His research explores the co-evolution of hosts and pathogens, integrating his expertise in evolution, virology, and immunology. Since 2013, he has combined his role as a Principal Investigator at BIOPOLIS-CIBIO with teaching Genetics and Evolution in the Department of Biology at FCUP. Website.

Aris Katzourakis, PhD, University of Oxford, UK

Aris Katzourakis is Professor of Evolution and Genomics at the University of Oxford. His research interests include viral evolution, genome evolution, and mobile genetic element evolution. This research is primarily focused on studying the long term evolutionary biology of viruses. This is facilitated by the discovery of a rich genomic 'fossil record' of ancient viral sequences within the genomes of their hosts, leading to the field of paleovirology. This can include using genomic sequence data to infer the evolutionary biology of retroviruses and their association with their vertebrate host genomes and immune responses, as well as modeling the dynamics of this evolutionary process and understanding the processes leading to viral emergence. Website.

Pedro Vale, PhD, University of Edinburgh, UK

Pedro Vale is an evolutionary ecologist with broad interests in the ecology and evolution of infectious disease. His research uses the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster as an established model of infection, immunity, and behaviour to investigate the causes of individual variation in immune responses, physiological traits and social behaviours, and the consequences of this variation for pathogen transmission and evolution. Recent and ongoing research topics include 1) the genetic basis, immune regulation, and the epidemiological consequences of disease tolerance; 2) the drivers of individual heterogeneity in pathogen transmission; 3) the evolutionary ecology of behavioural responses to infection. Website.

About the Collection

BMC Biology is calling for submissions to our Collection on Evolution of immunity. Evolution of immunity happens on many timescales and encompasses the development of both the innate and adaptive immune systems. The innate immune system provides an immediate response to pathogens often involving phagocytic processes, whereas the adaptive immune system responds after pathogenic invasion has begun, with the Toll pathway, a very ancient signaling pathway, which long predates the adaptive immune system linking the two. 

For this Collection, we invite immunity-related submissions with high impact from diverse research fields including evolutionary biology, genetics, and ecology. We are interested in research on evolutionary origins of immune cell types, viral DNA integration, how pathogens co-evolve with their hosts adapting to host immune defenses and shaping the trajectory of infectious diseases. We also welcome studies with insights from evolutionary immunology that are crucial for vaccine development, disease surveillance, antimicrobial resistance, and ecosystem health, offering innovative approaches for disease prevention and biodiversity conservation.

Potential topics for submission include, but are not limited to:

  • Adaptive changes in immune systems across species over time
  • The evolution of intrinsic immunity
  • Evolutionary dynamics of host-pathogen interactions
  • Evolutionary origins of immune cell types
  • Evolutionary aspects of macrophages polarization
  • Genetic basis of immune system variation within populations
  • Evolutionary perspectives on matters of public health such as vaccine development, disease surveillance, or antimicrobial resistance
  • Evolutionary ecology of infectious diseases
  • Eco-immunology: linking immune function to ecological interactions
  • Novel biological insights from phylogenetic analyses or comparative immunogenomics 
     

This Collection supports and amplifies research related to SDG 3: Good Health and Well-Being.


Image credit: © Kateryna_Kon / stock.adobe.com

  1. Land plants include angiosperms, gymnosperms, bryophytes, lycophytes, and ferns, each of which may deploy distinct strategies to resist pathogens. Here, we investigate fern-pathogen interactions by characteriz...

    Authors: Baptiste Castel, Madeleine Baker, Jean Keller, Yves Martinez, Maxime Bonhomme, Pierre-Marc Delaux and Christophe Jacquet
    Citation: BMC Biology 2025 23:301
    Content type: Research Published on:

  2. Guanylate-binding proteins (GBPs) belong to the large guanosine triphosphatases (GTPases) family and have specialised in host defence in vivo against a broad spectrum of invading pathogens. This ancient evolut...

    Authors: João Vasco Côrte-Real, Ana Pinheiro, Jordan M. Sampson, Kimberly A. Morrissey, João Pedro Marques, Hanna-Mari Baldauf, Robert D. Miller, Joana Abrantes and Pedro José Esteves
    Citation: BMC Biology 2025 23:292
    Content type: Research Published on:

  3. In many animals, survival during infection depends on the ability to coordinate interactions between the host immune system and gut microbiota. These tripartite interactions, in turn, potentially shape pathoge...

    Authors: Maryam Keshavarz, Mathias Franz, Haicheng Xie, Caroline Zanchi, Susan Mbedi, Sarah Sparmann and Jens Rolff
    Citation: BMC Biology 2025 23:278
    Content type: Research Published on:

  5. Research on forms of memory in innate immune systems has recently gained momentum with the study of trained immunity in vertebrates and immune priming in invertebrates. Immune priming is an evolutionary ancien...

    Authors: Moritz Baur, Nora K. E. Schulz, Lilo Greune, Zoe M. Länger, Jürgen Eirich, Iris Finkemeier, Robert Peuß, Petra Dersch and Joachim Kurtz
    Citation: BMC Biology 2025 23:227
    Content type: Research Published on:

  6. Arthropod-borne viruses (arboviruses) such as dengue virus (DENV) and Zika virus (ZIKV) pose a significant threat to global health. Novel approaches to control the spread of arboviruses focus on harnessing the...

    Authors: Elodie Couderc, Anna B. Crist, Josquin Daron, Hugo Varet, Femke A. H. van Hout, Pascal Miesen, Umberto Palatini, Stéphanie Dabo, Thomas Vial, Louis Lambrechts and Sarah H. Merkling
    Citation: BMC Biology 2025 23:223
    Content type: Research Published on:

  7. The activation of the immune system by pathogens imposes significant energetic costs on hosts, which may result in the diversion of resources away from other non-essential biological processes, such as growth ...

    Authors: Ting Tang, Lan Yang, Liya Ma, Yu Ren, Mengnan Li, Shufan Guo, Xin Wang, Yuming Zhang and Fengsong Liu
    Citation: BMC Biology 2025 23:220
    Content type: Research Published on:

  8. Marsupials have limited germline antibody heavy chain variable (VH) gene diversity and more complex light chain variable gene diversity. They also appear to have a limited repertoire of immunoglobulin heavy ch...

    Authors: Jordan M. Sampson, Kieran J. Mikolajova, Kourtney M. Zimmerly and Robert D. Miller
    Citation: BMC Biology 2025 23:215
    Content type: Research Published on:

  10. Interferon regulatory factors (IRFs) are a family of transcription factors with important functions in immunity. The genomes of most vertebrates encode ten IRF genes. IRF3 and IRF9 have key roles in interferon...

    Authors: Lenka Ungrová, Josef Geryk, Marina Kohn, Dana Kučerová, Veronika Krchlíková, Tomáš Hron, Vladimír Pečenka, Petr Pajer, Eliška Gáliková, Ľubomíra Pecnová, Bernd Kaspers, Jiří Hejnar, Jiří Nehyba and Daniel Elleder
    Citation: BMC Biology 2025 23:180
    Content type: Research Published on:

  11. Viral nervous necrosis (VNN) is an important viral disease threatening global aquaculture sustainability and affecting over 50 farmed and ecologically important fish species. A major QTL for resistance to VNN ...

    Authors: Robert Mukiibi, Serena Ferraresso, Rafaella Franch, Luca Peruzza, Giulia Dalla Rovere, Massimiliano Babbucci, Daniela Bertotto, Anna Toffan, Francesco Pascoli, Sara Faggion, Carolina Peñaloza, Costas S. Tsigenopoulos, Ross D. Houston, Luca Bargelloni and Diego Robledo
    Citation: BMC Biology 2025 23:75
    Content type: Research Published on:

Submission Guidelines

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This Collection welcomes submission of original Research Articles. Should you wish to submit a different article type, please read our submission guidelines. Articles for this Collection should be submitted via our submission system, Snapp. During the submission process you will be asked whether you are submitting to a Collection, please select "Evolution of Immunity" from the dropdown menu.

Articles will undergo the journal’s standard peer-review process and are subject to all of the journal’s standard policies. Articles will be added to the Collection as they are published.

The Editors have no competing interests with the submissions which they handle through the peer review process. The peer review of any submissions for which the Editors have competing interests is handled by another Editorial Board Member who has no competing interests.