Pathogens and Environmental Impact on Life Forms: Understanding Pathogens and Host Defence Mechanisms

Since before the time of our last common ancestor, microbes have been shaping our evolution and our environment, just as we have shaped theirs. This fact has recently gained renewed prominence with wider acknowledgement of the microbiome (part of One Health) and its role in maintenance of human homeostasis. This two-part book titled “Pathogens and Environmental Impact on Life Forms”, highlights the fluid dynamics we share with the microbes within us, including both, arguably ‘helpful’ species, and undoubtedly pathogenic ones (pathogen containment, clearance, and optimisation are dwelt on).It also underscores the effects of anthropogenic changes on microbes external to us, and the consequences of the resultant environmental dysbiosis for our continued health and well-being. Prominent examples include indiscriminate industrialisation and urbanisation. Both of these forces, empowered by a culture of consumerism, have led to excessive pollution and several detrimental lifestyle changes, which have culminated in our present obesity crisis and diabetes ‘pandemic’. Finally, this book concludes by emphasising that the way forward for healthcare is not only to be cognizant of the eubiotic microbiome in its diagnoses and treatments, but also to use this tremendous resource to contend with the quickly transforming landscape of infectious diseases.

Rajesh Pandey’s tryst with Biological Science started with Graduate degree in Zoology from University of Calcutta, followed by Master’s degree in Zoology, from University of Delhi. During PhD in Biotechnology from CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (CSIR-IGIB), he functionally elucidated the regulatory role played by Noncoding RNAs in Stress Response. Subsequently, Rajesh’s postdoctoral stint at Johns Hopkins University, Maryland, USA, and MRC Harwell Institute, Oxfordshire, UK, helped enhance the understanding further with exposure to different diseases and strength of Genomics. As Principal Scientist and Group leader at CSIR-IGIB, his lab is focussed on INtegrativeGENomics of HOst-PathogEn (INGEN-HOPE) to elucidate the hierarchical regulation of factors modulating Disease severity sub-phenotypes and Clinical outcome. The pathogen and host response findings have been published in more than 120 research articles in journals inclusive of Genome Biology, iScience, NAR, Frontiers in Immunology, Clinical & Translational Medicine, Microbiology Spectrum, Life Science Alliance, mBio, Nature, Science, and Lancet Infectious diseases. Rajesh has academic interest towards writing books elucidating aspects of host-pathogen Interactome. His two books,  (i) RNA-based Regulation in Human Health and Disease, and (ii) Genomic Surveillance and Pandemic Preparedness, published by Elsevier, is having global readership.

Ramanathan Sethuraman has 28 years of research and development expertise in multimedia and healthcare analytics. After his PhD from the Indian Institute of Science in Digital Signal Processor architectures, he has worked as a Research Scientist at Philips Research Labs (PRL) in The Netherlands, as a Director and Product Manager at Silicon Hive, and as a Media/Healthcare Architect and Principal Engineer at Intel. In healthcare analytics, his research focus has been on understanding multimodal Health and Life Sciences (HLS) data, leading to novel insights that point towards disease causation rather than just correlation. His research premise is centered around AI-ML-DL based learning from HLS Big Data (OMICS of hologenome) of metaorganisms (organisms that coexist with their microbiota), which reveals more comprehensive disease manifestation pathways, allowing for earlier disease detection and more efficacious interventions. He holds 20 US patents and over 60 peer-reviewed publications.