Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

The allometry of host-pathogen interactions.

Jessica M Cable1, Brian J Enquist, Melanie E Moses

  • 1Department of Botany, University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming, United States of America. jcable1@uwyo.edu

Plos One
|November 8, 2007
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Balancing land use for conservation, agriculture, and renewable energy.

Nature communications·2026
Same author

Global functional shifts in trees driven by alien naturalization and native extinction.

Nature plants·2026
Same author

Bigger is faster in the adaptive immune response.

Scientific reports·2025
Same author

Allometry and phylogeny of within-diaspore biomass allocation: A global analysis.

Biology letters·2025
Same author

Plant traits and associated ecological data from Afromontane grasslands of Maloti-Drakensberg, South Africa.

Scientific data·2025
Same author

General laws of biodiversity: Climatic niches predict plant range size and ecological dominance globally.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·2025
Same journal

Invaders taking over-Mollusc faunal change in volcanic barrier lakes of the Albertine Rift biodiversity hotspot.

PloS one·2026
Same journal

AI-driven molecular diversification and ligand-based optimization of macitentan derivatives targeting VEGFR1 and endothelin signaling pathways.

PloS one·2026
Same journal

Performance patterns and records in the world aquatics masters championships: Where do the most frequently represented nations among the top-ten masters swimmers come from?

PloS one·2026
Same journal

Modeling diurnal Temperature-Rainfall relationships under multicollinearity using PLS-SEM: A case study of Ghana.

PloS one·2026
Same journal

Organizational culture, social capital, and emergency capacity in primary healthcare institutions: A cross-sectional structural equation modeling study comparing ordinary and older communities.

PloS one·2026
Same journal

Impact of kidney function on the metabolome in the general population.

PloS one·2026
See all related articles

Disease progression rates in animals are linked to body size and metabolism. This study reveals that host metabolic scaling influences pathogenesis, impacting disease timelines and potentially population dynamics.

Area of Science:

  • Comparative Pathology
  • Allometry
  • Epidemiology

Background:

  • Understanding disease progression mechanisms is crucial for epidemiology and interspecies research.
  • Body size and metabolic rate are key factors influencing biological rates and disease timelines.
  • Hypothesizes that host body size and metabolic rate impact pathogenesis rates, specifically time to symptoms or death.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the relationship between host metabolic scaling and disease progression rates.
  • To determine if body size and metabolic rate influence the time from infection to symptoms and death.
  • To explore the implications for disease dynamics and interspecies disease modeling.

Main Methods:

  • Conducted a literature search for time-to-symptom (tS) and time-to-death (tD) estimates for pathogens in birds and mammals.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Analyzed data from five diseases (bacterial, prion, viral) across various hosts.
  • Applied allometric scaling principles to analyze host-pathogen interactions.

    • Main Results:

    • Pathogenesis rates are significantly controlled by the scaling of host metabolism across diverse hosts and diseases.
    • Time to symptoms is a consistent fraction of time to death for most diseases studied.
    • Disease dynamics at the population level may be independent of host body size, expressed as dimensionless quantities.

    Conclusions:

    • Variability in host pathogenesis aligns with power functions related to host metabolic rate scaling.
    • Geometric relationships are key to understanding disease progression control.
    • This study is the first to report allometric scaling in host/pathogen interactions, offering a new framework for research.