Generators of Phenotypic Diversity in the Evolution of Pathogenic Microorganisms

All organisms run the gauntlet of Darwinian selection. Poignant examples include microbial pathogens, which must survive and thrive in their hosts. The process of pathogen adaptation to the host is diverse and is now known to involve a panoply of diversity generators, such as sexual/parasexual reproduction, aneuploidy, prions, mutators, telomeric silencing/recombination, and Hsp90 as a capacitor for evolution [1,2] (Figure 1). Given the vast diversity of known mechanisms that can generate phenotypic and genotypic assortments, others likely remain to be discovered.