User:Alec4465/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Viral evolution

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
My major was evolutionary biology and I have always found pathogens interesting.

Evaluate the article
The lead section has a few minor issues, it brings up several pieces of information that are not explicitly discussed such as virus' capability of single point mutations, how viral evolution can be an issue for vaccines, or that resistant mutations can arise within weeks of treatment, and for the latter it doesn't provide a source or what virus is capable of evolving resistant mutations or what treatments the mutations allow them to circumvent. This is just one of several claims in the section that should have sources. It should also introduce that there are many theories on the origins of viral evolution as that is most of what the article is about.

Overall the content of the article is fairly good, it definitely needs more sources for a lot of the claims and sentences though. Additionally in the evolution subsection it should reference natural selection directly. It mentions that viruses reproduce at astronomical numbers with a high mutation rate and that it doesn't matter if some of them are not viable. I think it could be better phrased where it mentions natural selection directly, as well as mentioning a lot of them are unviable (rather than a "few" as it states, but that might just be a semantic grievance), and I believe the article should mention how viruses tend to lack in their level of RNA proofreading which allows for their higher mutation rates.

The article is well written and concise but there are areas that need more information added such as the transmission subsection and horizontal transmission should probably have its own section rather than a single sentence at the end of transmission.