Is It Time To Kill the Survival Curve? A Case for Disease Progression Factors in Microbial Pathogenesis and Host Defense Research

Abstract

The molecular mechanisms of microbial virulence and host defense are most often studied using animal models and Koch’s molecular postulates. A common rationale for these types of experiments is to identify therapeutic targets based on the assumption that microbial or host factors that confer extreme animal model survival phenotypes represent critical virulence and host defense factors.