“Here, you know, you have to run as much as you can to stay in one place. When you want to go somewhere else, you have to run at least twice as fast. » It is with these words that the Red Queen addresses Alice, in the second partAlice in Wonderlandby Lewis Carroll, Through the looking glass. To understand its connection to immunology, you have to imagine the host species (such as a plant or animal) and the pathogen species that infects it (virus, bacteria, or other). Through natural selection, over generations, hosts will develop ways to fight pathogens. In response, the infectious agent will also develop a response that counterattacks the host’s new defenses. An evolutionary chase then ensues between the two species, similar to Alice treading water. This is called the Red Queen theory, or arms race.
Therefore, we can imagine that the host and the pathogen run to live in the same place. On the other hand, because of the many adaptations in response to a particular pathogen, the host species should quickly diverge from neighboring species that are also infected by other pathogens. Therefore, many differences between species are related to immunity. Even within the human species, populations from different regions show different immune adaptations.
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