Strategic Research

Real-time evolution.

All around us we can witness these changes occurring in real time.  They threaten our way of life on many fronts from emerging diseases and parasites to natural selection of agricultural pests.   Our drugs, vaccines and pesticides induce an arms race as we try to stay one step ahead of the rapidly evolving microbes and bugs.  Understanding the basic  processes involved in these modifications are essential if we are win this arms race and improve the quality of life for this and future generations.

By understanding these evolutionary processes, we can tip the balance in our favor and take the steps necessary to control and cure some of the most prevalent diseases.   But evolution can also be made to work for us.  Artificial selection and directed evolution are used as tools to produce better crops and medicines, and to create new industries that use genes and organisms to degrade pollutants or generate biofuels.

The University of Idaho already has strength and success in this area.  This effort will involve forming new collaborations among the disciplines such as life sciences, ecological sciences, mathematics, statistics, computer sciences, physics, chemistry, and engineering, to name only the most obvious.

Prof. L. Forney, Professor of Biology, is the coordinator for this area.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 16th, 2009 at 3:50 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. This blog is focused on science and posts and comments are encouraged to stay topical. This is an English-language blog; we are not staffed for translation. Comments and content that appears here is posted by individuals and does not necessarily represent the views or policies of the University of Idaho. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.