key: cord-0918851-ma0n8hui authors: Gu, Jianying; Zhou, Zhan; Wang, Yufeng title: Editorial: Evolutionary Mechanisms of Infectious Diseases date: 2021-05-13 journal: Front Microbiol DOI: 10.3389/fmicb.2021.667561 sha: decd3ef4c0122656e9ebb426cca812253c93d171 doc_id: 918851 cord_uid: ma0n8hui nan the emergence of the pandemic in December 2019 (Sohrabi et al., 2020; Yang et al., 2020) . The six articles in this section offer new insight into the evolutionary and structural features of SARS-CoV-2: (1) Xing et al. develop a freely available program, MicroGMT, to identify and characterize mutations in microbial genomes, with the default setting optimized for SARS-CoV2. (2) Shen et al. present a comprehensive genomic epidemiology study that reveals a haplotype pattern of geographical specificity at the city-, state-, and country-levels, supporting the effectiveness of travel restriction in preventing widespread transmission. (3) Lv et al. describe a comparative genomic analysis between human SARS-CoV-2 and its close relative Bat-CoV RaTG13, and identify mutation patterns indicative of stronger purifying selection occurred in SARS-CoV-2. (4) The article by Liu S. et al. extends this topic. Distinct genomic single nucleotide variation signatures are identified in more than 30,000 SARS-CoV-2 genomes, which may have functional consequences due to the viral genetic instability (Liu S. et al.) . (5) Readers interested in SARS-CoV-2 pathogenesis will appreciate a timely report by Liu T. et al. on the features and evolutionary difference of viral gene expression and fusion events in the SARS-CoV-2 infected cells from the patients with moderate and severe COVID-19. (6) Cui and Zhang report the presence of G-Quadruplexes in human coronaviruses including SARS-CoV-2, suggesting targeting G-Quadruplexes as a potential avenue to COVID-19 therapeutics. The second section is devoted to the evolutionary mechanisms of bacteria. We are glad to present three review articles: Tuberculosis, one of the oldest known human infectious diseases, remains one of the major causes of mortality globally. In summary, this collection of 21 articles covers a variety of topics in evolutionary mechanisms of infectious diseases, including the role of factors that influence pathogen virulence and host susceptibility, the role of genetic variation and population dynamics on pathogenesis, the role of medical interventions on drug resistance, and the role of disease control interventions on pathogen emergence and transmission. We hope that the Research Topic will be useful for a wide audience, particularly evolutionary biologists, microbiologists, infectious disease researchers and clinicians, genome scientists, systems biologists, graduate, and undergraduate students. The role of evolution in the emergence of infectious diseases The evolution of transmission mode Fun(gi)omics: advanced and diverse technologies to explore emerging fungal pathogens and define mechanisms of antifungal resistance. mBio 11 Short-term evolution strategies for host adaptation and drug escape in human fungal pathogens Plasticity in early immune evasion strategies of a bacterial pathogen Evolution of virulence in emerging epidemics Evolutionary emergence of infectious diseases in heterogeneous host populations Advances in omics-based methods to identify novel targets for malaria and other parasitic protozoan infections The adaptive evolution of virulence: a review of theoretical predictions and empirical tests Evolutionary perspectives on human infectious diseases: challenges, advances, and promises Emerging and reemerging infectious diseases: the perpetual challenge The phylogenomics of evolving virus virulence Drug resistance in plasmodium Strategies and mechanisms for host and pathogen survival in acute and persistent viral infections Multi-omics strategies uncover host-pathogen interactions Achieving global targets for antimicrobial resistance How should pathogen transmission be modelled? Antibiotic resistance-problems, progress, and prospects World Health Organization declares global emergency: a review of the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) Pathogens' adaptation to the human host Gastrointestinal host-pathogen interaction in the age of microbiome research Bacterial immune evasion through manipulation of host inhibitory immune signaling Pathogens, microbiome and the host: emergence of the ecological Koch's postulates Emerging infectious diseases: a review Clinical course and outcomes of critically ill patients with SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia in Wuhan, China: a single-centered, retrospective, observational study We sincerely thank all researchers who have contributed to our Research Topic. All authors listed have made a substantial, direct and intellectual contribution to the work, and approved it for publication. The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.Copyright © 2021 Gu, Zhou and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.