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Viral evolution is a subfield of evolutionary biology and virology that is specifically concerned with the evolution of viruses. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] Viruses have short generation times, and many—in particular RNA viruses —have relatively high mutation rates (on the order of one point mutation or more per genome per round of replication).
The rapid rate of evolution in viruses allows molecular clock models to be estimated from genetic sequences, thus providing a per-year rate of evolution of the virus. With the rate of evolution measured in real units of time, it is possible to infer the date of the most recent common ancestor (MRCA) for a set of viral sequences. The age of the ...
Ewald is known for his "theory of virulence”, suggesting that "the deadlier the germ, the less likely it is to spread", [1] and his theory that many common diseases of unknown origin are likely the result of chronic low-level infections from viruses, bacteria or protozoa.
Evolution of Infectious Disease is a 1993 book by the evolutionary biologist Paul W. Ewald. In this book, Ewald contests the traditional view that parasites should evolve toward benign coexistence with their hosts. He draws on various studies that contradict this dogma and asserts his theory based on fundamental evolutionary principles.
In theory, if the mutation rate was sufficiently high, the viral population would not be able to maintain the genotype with the highest fitness, and therefore the ability of the population to adapt to its environment would be compromised. A practical application of this dynamic is in antiviral drugs employing lethal mutagenesis.
For example, if a contact network can be approximated with an Erdős–Rényi graph with a Poissonian degree distribution, and the disease spreading parameters are as defined in the example above, such that is the transmission rate per person and the disease has a mean infectious period of , then the basic reproduction number is = [22] [23 ...
Virus Evolution is an open access scientific journal of virology published by Oxford University Press.It was launched in 2015 and focuses on all aspects of virus evolution and ecology, including the long-term evolution of viruses, viruses as a model system for studying evolutionary processes, virus classification, viral molecular epidemiology, viral phylodynamics, and environmental virology.
Gamma phage, an example of virus particles (visualised by electron microscopy) Virology is the scientific study of biological viruses.It is a subfield of microbiology that focuses on their detection, structure, classification and evolution, their methods of infection and exploitation of host cells for reproduction, their interaction with host organism physiology and immunity, the diseases they ...