Viral Population Dynamics and Sequence Space
Gonzalo Moratorio and Marco Vignuzzi
from: Enteroviruses: Omics, Molecular Biology, and Control (Edited by: William T. Jackson and Carolyn B. Coyne). Caister Academic Press, U.K. (2018) Pages: 69-92.
Abstract
Without question, the study of enteroviruses at the molecular scale has uncovered the vast majority of our knowledge on the biology of these viruses, how they invade and replicate in host cells, the molecular determinants of pathogenesis, molecular targets for vaccines and antivirals. Molecular studies have also helped understand how these viruses propagate as populations, and being RNA viruses, they have considerably contributed to the study of RNA virus population dynamics. Because at this level we are under the broader umbrella of population genetics and evolutionary sciences, it would be impossible to present a uniquely Enterovirus-specific chapter on the matter. Rather, we have opted to present an overview of the questions that have been addressed in RNA virus population biology, with the state of the art and future directions, giving special attention to instances in which picornaviruses, and more specifically the enteroviruses, have made significant contributions. Here, we describe how RNA viruses have come to be viewed as highly diverse populations, how enteroviruses have heavily contributed to understanding two principal mechanisms by which diversity is maintained (mutation and recombination), the current work attempting to fully characterize the genetic sequence space and the phenotypic fitness landscapes occupied by these viral populations, and several kinds of intra-population dynamics that have been observed and require further study in the future. While Enterovirus studies punctuate the field throughout, it is important to bear in mind that in several cases, even more detailed studies have been performed in other virus families, and the reader is encouraged to seek those out for a more complete picture read more ...
