Assignment #1 Relevance of Evolution to Medicine

Instructions and Questions: Relevance of Evolution

Instructions: Below are the instructions and questions. Start with the Relevance of Evolution: Medicine material on UC Berkeley's website and answer the questions below it.

Physical Anthropology Assignment #1 50 points

Darwinian Medicine and the Relevance of Medicine and Evolution

Before reading this article define the following terms and diseases (and any others that are not known to you) by searching for them on the Internet using dictionaries not Wikipedia. Start by reading the material from Relevance of Evolution: Medicine. Then go on to read information from the article posted called How is Darwinian Medicine Useful. Answer the following questions and post in the body of the email on our private message system at ETUDES.

Do not attach your work. All questions must be written in your own words not copied from the articles! Copying is called plagiarism and it results in a zero grade on the assignment. Also number and space your answers. Do not send one big paragraph. Your answers should be at least a few sentences with examples to get full credit.

DEFINE THESE TERMS AS PART OF THE ASSIGNMENT....THEY MUST BE WRITTEN OUT AND INCLUDED: Shigelladysenteriae, febrile seizures, arterial calcification, pathogens, syphilis, virulence, Plasmodium, vectors, Escherichia coli, nosocomial pathogens, Vibrio cholerae

Relevance of Evolution: Medicine

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/medicine_01

1. What is causing the evolutionary arms race with pathogens? Provide an example to illustrate your answer.

2. How can we slow down antibiotic resistance?

3. What is the evolutionary history of HIV? Why do some people live with HIV and not get sick?

4. How is the medical community controlling HIV's resistance to drugs?

5. How is Huntington's Chorea passed down from one generation to the next? Explain in detail the process of inheritance.

6. Why does Huntington's Chorea persist in the population?

How is Darwinian Medicine Useful?

1. 1. What questions does Darwinian medicine seek to answer?

2. 2. How did natural selection shape appetite regulation? How does this become maladaptive in today's society where abundance of food and lack of exercise are prevalent?

3. 3. What role did anxiety play in ancient times and what mental diseases do we associate today as a possible result of the evolution of anxiety? How does our modern lifestyle contribute to higher levels of anxiety?

4. How is fever, cough, and other maladies useful as evolutionary defenses? Should we be prescribing medications to block these natural responses? What problems does our modern medication usage cause to the evolution of pathogens?

2. 5. What is the link of reproductive success to our understanding of some maladaptive evolutionary designs of our genes and body that manifest later in life?

3. 6. What role does natural selection play in adjusting virulence levels for pathogens?