About

Van Savage is a Professor in the Departments of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Computational Medicine at UCLA. His research aims to quantify and understand the functions, forms, and interactions of biological systems that contribute to the extraordinary diversity in nature. His work spans a wide range of areas including metabolic scaling, consumer-resource interactions, rates of evolution, effects of global warming on ecosystems, tumor growth, and sleep. Savage focuses on developing theories that incorporate natural variation, challenging current models by revealing flaws and proposing new frameworks based on large datasets. His contributions include studying the diversity and variation in biological form and function, advancing understanding in ecological and evolutionary biology, and applying computational approaches to biological questions.

Research topics

• Genetics
• Virology
• Immunology
• Internal medicine
• Medicine
• Microbiology
• Biology

Selected publications

• Compounding Effects of Climate Warming and Antibiotic Resistance

  iScience · 2020 · 135 citations

  • Ecology
  • Biology
  • Microbiology

  Bacteria have evolved diverse mechanisms to survive environments with antibiotics. Temperature is both a key factor that affects the survival of bacteria in the presence of antibiotics and an environmental trait that is drastically increasing due to climate change. Therefore, it is timely and important to understand links between temperature changes and selection of antibiotic resistance. This review examines these links by synthesizing results from laboratories, hospitals, and environmental studies. First, we describe the transient physiological responses to temperature that alter cellular behavior and lead to antibiotic tolerance and persistence. Second, we focus on the link between thermal stress and the evolution and maintenance of antibiotic resistance mutations. Finally, we explore how local and global changes in temperature are associated with increases in antibiotic resistance and its spread. We suggest that a multidisciplinary, multiscale approach is critical to fully understand how temperature changes are contributing to the antibiotic crisis.

  DOI

• Quantifying antibody kinetics and RNA detection during early-phase SARS-CoV-2 infection by time since symptom onset

  eLife · 2020 · 103 citations

  • Immunology
  • Biology
  • Virology

  Understanding and mitigating SARS-CoV-2 transmission hinges on antibody and viral RNA data that inform exposure and shedding, but extensive variation in assays, study group demographics and laboratory protocols across published studies confounds inference of true biological patterns. Our meta-analysis leverages 3214 datapoints from 516 individuals in 21 studies to reveal that seroconversion of both IgG and IgM occurs around 12 days post-symptom onset (range 1-40), with extensive individual variation that is not significantly associated with disease severity. IgG and IgM detection probabilities increase from roughly 10% at symptom onset to 98-100% by day 22, after which IgM wanes while IgG remains reliably detectable. RNA detection probability decreases from roughly 90% to zero by day 30, and is highest in feces and lower respiratory tract samples. Our findings provide a coherent evidence base for interpreting clinical diagnostics, and for the mathematical models and serological surveys that underpin public health policies.

  DOI

• Unraveling why we sleep: Quantitative analysis reveals abrupt transition from neural reorganization to repair in early development

  Science Advances · 2020 · 103 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Neuroscience

  Sleep serves disparate functions, most notably neural repair, metabolite clearance and circuit reorganization. Yet the relative importance remains hotly debated. Here, we create a novel mechanistic framework for understanding and predicting how sleep changes during ontogeny and across phylogeny. We use this theory to quantitatively distinguish between sleep used for neural reorganization versus repair. Our findings reveal an abrupt transition, between 2 and 3 years of age in humans. Specifically, our results show that differences in sleep across phylogeny and during late ontogeny (after 2 or 3 years in humans) are primarily due to sleep functioning for repair or clearance, while changes in sleep during early ontogeny (before 2 or 3 years) primarily support neural reorganization and learning. Moreover, our analysis shows that neuroplastic reorganization occurs primarily in REM sleep but not in NREM. This developmental transition suggests a complex interplay between developmental and evolutionary constraints on sleep.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Benny Borremans

  3 shared

• Rohr Jason

  1 shared

• Shocket Marta

  1 shared

• James O. Lloyd‐Smith

  University of California, Los Angeles

  1 shared

• Abby M. McClain

  National Marine Mammal Foundation

  1 shared

• Johnson Leah

  1 shared

• Sarah K. Helman

  University of California, Los Angeles

  1 shared

• Ibarra Anna Stewart

  1 shared

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