Vaccines Are Pushing Pathogens to Evolve
Vaccines Are Pushing Pathogens to Evolve IMMUNOLOGY Vaccines Are Pushing Pathogens to Evolve By MELINDA WENNER MOYER May 10, 2018 Just as antibiotics breed resistance in bacteria, vaccines can incite changes that enable diseases to escape their control. Researchers are working to head off the evolution of new threats. 10 READ LATER Matthew J. Jones, a research assistant at Pennsylvania State University, takes a sample of dust collected from a chicken farm to test it for signs of the virus that causes Marek’s disease, an infection common among poultry. Some evidence suggests that the virus that causes the disease is becoming immune to yet another version of the vaccine that controls it. Sasha Maslov for Quanta Magazine Andrew Read became a scientist so he could spend more time in nature, but he never imagined that would mean a commercial chicken farm. Read, a disease ecologist who directs the Pennsylvania State University Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics, and his res