Evolution of antibodies and human disease
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This thesis explores the effect on human disease of two evolutionary processes: environmental selection on human disease risk alleles and antibody selection in response to vaccination. Examples of the effect of environment on the genetics of human disease exist, but the relative contributions of environmental selection and neutral forces, such as Out-of-Africa migration, on the genes that increase disease risk are not well understood. Chapter 2 explores the stability of a method commonly used to infer selection due to environmental variables and proposes a method to decrease run-to-run variability. Then, using this method as well as a novel method for determining environmental selection across human populations, chapter 3 examines the effect of Out-of-Africa migration and climate variables on the worldwide frequencies of disease risk alleles. The second half of this thesis focuses on the selection of antibodies, proteins that identify and neutralize foreign molecules in the human body, that occurs within an individual in response to seasonal influenza vaccination. Although the general mechanisms underlying antibody selection have been studied for decades, few quantitative measurements have been made, and the details of this process are not well understood. Using high throughput sequence data, chapter 4 explores the dynamics of the antibody response. Our analyses identify selection on specific sequence characteristics and estimate previously unknown distributions that allow inferences on the biological processes that occur during antibody selection. Chapter 5 examines the similarity of the antibody response across individuals, showing that a much stronger convergence of antibody sequences occurs within individuals than between.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2017 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Blair, Lily Margaret | |
|---|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Biology. | |
| Primary advisor | Feldman, Marcus W | |
| Primary advisor | Fisher, Daniel | |
| Thesis advisor | Feldman, Marcus W | |
| Thesis advisor | Fisher, Daniel | |
| Thesis advisor | Quake, Stephen Ronald | |
| Thesis advisor | Rosenberg, Noah | |
| Advisor | Quake, Stephen Ronald | |
| Advisor | Rosenberg, Noah |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Lily Margaret Blair. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Biology. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2017. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2017 by Lily Margaret Blair
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Also listed in
Loading usage metrics...