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The Two Faces of Mutation: Extinction and Adaptation in RNA Viruses
Author(s) -
Elena Santiago F.,
Miralles Rosario,
Cuevas Jose M.,
Turner Paul E.,
Moya Andres
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
iubmb life
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.132
H-Index - 113
eISSN - 1521-6551
pISSN - 1521-6543
DOI - 10.1080/713803585
Subject(s) - biology , adaptation (eye) , population , viral evolution , rna , genetic drift , extinction (optical mineralogy) , genetics , viral replication , evolutionary biology , genetic fitness , experimental evolution , mutation , rna virus , replication (statistics) , population bottleneck , selection (genetic algorithm) , virology , virus , genetic variation , gene , allele , neuroscience , computer science , paleontology , demography , artificial intelligence , sociology , microsatellite
From a population standpoint, two main features characterize the replication of RNA viruses and viruses that use RNA as a replicative intermediate: high genetic variability, and enormous fluctuations in population size. Their genetic variability mainly reflects a lack of the proof‐reading and post‐replicative error correction mechanisms that operate during cellular DNA replication, but recombination and segment exchange can also play an important role. Viral population size can change tremendously as a consequence of transmission between hosts or between different tissues within an infected host. A new infection can be initiated with very few particles that subsequently expand many trillion‐fold. Repeated bottleneck events can lead to drastic fitness losses or even to viral extinction, whereas continuously large population sizes result in fitness gains and adaptation. Here we review experimental evidence for the effects of mutation, selection, and genetic drift on the adaptation and extinction of RNA viruses.