title: Opportunity for selection in human health.
abstract: Natural selection defined by differential survival and reproduction of individuals in populations is influenced by genetic, developmental, and environmental factors operating at every age and stage in human life history: generation of gametes, conception, birth, maturation, reproduction, senescence, and death. Biological systems are built upon a hierarchical organization nesting subcellular organelles, cells, tissues, and organs within individuals, individuals within families, and families within populations, and the latter among other populations. Natural selection often acts simultaneously at more than one level of biological organization and on specific traits, which we define as multilevel selection. Under this model, the individual is a fundamental unit of biological organization and also of selection, imbedded in a larger evolutionary context, just as it is a unit of medical intervention imbedded in larger biological, cultural, and environmental contexts. Here, we view human health and life span as necessary consequences of natural selection, operating at all levels and phases of biological hierarchy in human life history as well as in sociological and environmental milieu. An understanding of the spectrum of opportunities for natural selection will help us develop novel approaches to improving healthy life span through specific and global interventions that simultaneously focus on multiple levels of biological organization. Indeed, many opportunities exist to apply multilevel selection models employed in evolutionary biology and biodemography to improving human health at all hierarchical levels. Multilevel selection perspective provides a rational theoretical foundation for a synthesis of medicine and evolution that could lead to discovering effective predictive, preventive, palliative, potentially curative, and individualized approaches in medicine and in global health programs.
authors.affiliation: National Evolutionary Synthesis Center, Durham, NC, USA. Electronic address: drgrajugis@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Diddahally R
authors.initials: DR
authors.lastname: Govindaraju
mesh_terms: D005075:Biological Evolution; D006262:Health; D006801:Humans; D008136:Longevity / Q000235:genetics*; D010641:Phenotype; D012641:Selection, Genetic
keywords: Developmental demography; Evolution and medicine; Fitness; Genetic disease burden; Identity-by-context; Individualized medicine; Lansing range; Multilevel selection; Population structure; Units and targets of selection