Evolution in Immune Systems

Michael Deem

Wednesday, 06 Mar 2013 at 8:00 pm – Great Hall, Memorial Union

Michael Deem is a computational theorist whose work has contributed significantly to our understanding of important aspects of immunology, evolution and materials science. He researches Newton's laws of biology, the theory of personalized critical care, physical theories of pathogen evolution, and the structure of zeolites. He has shown that the speed at which life evolves is constantly increasing because of horizontal gene transfer and created a database of more than 4 million possible molecular configurations for zeolites. He will discuss methods he has developed for predicting vaccine effectiveness and for determining which strains of the flu to cover in annual vaccine formulations. Michael Deem is the John W. Cox Professor in Bioengineering and a professor of physics & astronomy at Rice University. Phi Beta Kappa Lecture.

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The influenza virus has a high evolution rate, which makes designing the annual flu vaccine challenging. A mismatch between the strain in the vaccine and the strain infecting the public leads to a less effective vaccine and to broader infection in the population. A precise measure of how differently the immune system perceives the vaccine and virus enables a better design of the flu shot. I will discuss a method to predict vaccine efficacy that we have developed, which is at least as predictive as, and sometimes more so than, animal model studies. Interestingly, the immune system typically recognizes the H1N1 strain of the flu to a greater degree than it does the H3N2 strain, leading to better flu shots for H1N1 than H3N2. The evolution rate of H1N1 is also greater than that of H3N2, presumably due to greater pressure on the virus to evolve. I will also discuss a technique we have developed for early detection of new flu strains. I will show that this method is able to detect new versions of the flu earlier than the present approaches used by health authorities. Finally, I will discuss evolution with the immune system of bacteria, CRISPR.

More bio
Michael Deem is a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, the American Physical Society, the Biomedical Engineering Society, and the AAAS. His honors include a Sloan Foundation fellowship; the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award in 2002; a National Science Foundation CAREER Award; the Colburn Award for excellence in publications as well as the Professional Progress Award from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers; and the O'Donnell Award from the Academy of Medicine, Engineering & Science of Texas. He gave the Vaughan Lectures at Caltech in 2007 and was chosen one of MIT's Technology Review 1999 Young Innovators. He is an associate editor of Physical Biology and Protein Engineering Design & Selection.

Cosponsored By:

• Chemical and Biological Engineering
• Honors Program
• LAS Miller Lecture Fund
• Phi Beta Kappa
• Committee on Lectures (funded by Student Government)