In extant C. albicans, morphological variation alters cell surface antigens and it is likely that this pathogen uses its sophisticated capacity to generate morphological variation as a strategy to escape the immune system.
The Lyme disease spirochete, Borrelia burgdorferi, uses antigenic variation as a strategy to evade the host's acquired immune response.
We hypothesize that, in early embryos, phenotypic variation is a strategy aimed at maintaining fitness (reproductive success) in a changing environment.
The polymorphism seen in OmpA has been attributed to immune selection pressure rather than differences in biological function suggesting that C. trachomatis employs antigenic variation as a strategy for immune evasion [ 36].
For a homogeneous (within class) site, where the scales of class and region account for most of the spatial variation, a sampling strategy should focus more on using accurate land cover maps and selection of regions.
Such variations seem to be involved in phase variation, an adaptation strategy to evade immune responses and degradation [ 3].
This work opens important perspectives in understanding the molecular mechanisms of antigenic variation, a widely used strategy for immune evasion in pathogens, and telomere biology.
By playing the each player is head to head with the player from the other team variation, a level of strategy is added, as both teams try to match up skill levels but at the same time be slightly better than the other team's player.
In this study, to minimize bias from seasonal variation, a number of strategies were employed in both the design of the study and the analytic methods, including matching on the date of blood draw, using season-specific cutpoints to create exposure categories, stratifying on season, and conducting residual-adjusted analyses.
Despite the use of a maximum variation sampling strategy with an aim to recruit both Caucasian and non-Caucasian participants, we were only able to recruit Caucasian participants (see table 1).
