Talk:Viral evolution/Archive 1

name of article
I have been wondering how to best call and introduce this article. Many of the people I work with would say they are working in the field 'virus evolution'. Therefore, I somehow think this is a better title than 'evolution of viruses' or something similar. However, it is hard to come up with a good first sentence in which the phrase 'virus evolution' appears and can be made bold. Wilke 02:57, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)


 * Yep, I had the same problem, what I put there was pretty lame, I admit, but it was a start. Should this article be about the entity that is virus evolution, or an academic field "virus evolution"? Or both? --Lexor 03:11, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)


 * I will think about this some more. Maybe the best strategy is to write some more contents first, and then think about what the article actually describes, and how it should be called.Wilke 03:33, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I think that the co-evolution of viruses and their host should be covered together in this page. Each is constantly evolving in a "viral-host arms race". Dr d12 19:48, 8 March 2007 (UTC)


 * This is only true when the virus is harmful to the host (or vice-versa). If a virus is beneficial, or neutral, then the rules are different.  I just want to challenge the assumption that all viruses result in reduced host fitness. Scray (talk) 03:56, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

I do agree with the proposal to move/merge the content from Intra-host evolution and Inter-host evolution to this page. Would provide better context, and the comparison between the two is key to understanding. Scray (talk) 04:01, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I've merged these two articles into Viral evolution --Lox (t,c) 09:41, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

suggestions
Suggested contents? I would suggest that if expanded this page ought to include sections on:
 * Viral mutation rates, fitness spectra of point mutations and substitution rates
 * Population dynamics and phylodynamics:
 * Population bottlenecks at transmission
 * Initial growth phase and peak viraemia
 * Host immune response
 * Selection pressures acting on viruses:
 * Negative / purifying (e.g. to retain basic structure, functionality and infectivity on transmission to a new host)
 * Positive/diversifying (e.g. HIV hypervariable regions to facillitate CTL escape)
 * Viral coevolution
 * Role of drift
 * Some introduction of viral recombination, especially segmented (e.g. flu) vs. nonsegmented (e.g. HIV) viruses
 * Host genome interactions (e.g. retroviruses)
 * Other host defences e.g. viral defence genes such as APOBEC family ans viral responses e.g. vif gene in HIV
 * A clearer account of differences between intra-host and inter-host (population level) evolution.
 * The viral quasispecies - and here crucially a distinction should be made between the theoretical concept itself from the mid/late 90s (more-or-less trashed now) and the current common usage of the term 'quasispecies' to mean 'a population of closely related viruses whose genetic diversity is maintained by rapid mutation but shaped predominantly by selection in response to host immune pressures'

Sorry if that list's a bit RNA-virus-centric but I don't know all that much about DNA viruses... --Comrade jo (talk) 12:14, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) This article can be improved by providing specific mechanisms through which viral evolution takes place. It should also factor in the biology of the virus and factors that propagate the evolution of different viruses. Also a clearer definition and differences between intra-host and inter-host.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alsaeed87 (talk • contribs) 23:20, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

I will be working on editing the Viral Evolution article. I would like to improve the introduction along with adding more details about the different ideas behind viral evolution.

Here are some sources that I have found so far to help me:

Clbabcock (talk) 18:40, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

too technical
Although a very good Wikipedia page, most of it sounds very technical. I can imagine it might be difficult for a common reader to navigate through. Some of the ways to improve this is by using smaller words. Or words that most people know. After a difficult sentence, you could say “In other words…” and summarize information. Section that can be most improved to sound less technical is the evolution. Before talking about RNA or DNA maybe mention viruses are very diverse and include the 6 genome types (ds DNA, ds RNA, + strand RNA, etc) I thought the hypotheses were explained very well and I am glad you included them. There is a lot of good information. I especially like the images you included. In the transmission section, it was helpful to include different mechanisms for transmission. Maybe including more examples of viruses that use that certain type of mechanism for transmitting would be helpful. For example, Influenza virus is spread through airborne, Hepatitis E and Hepatitis A transmitted through waterborne.Zabb17 (talk) 18:29, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Zabb17, thank you for your feedback. I went back and changed a bit and tried to make it seem less technical. Clbabcock (talk) 16:42, 12 December 2017 (UTC)