Natural language predicts viral escape Viral mutations that evade neutralizing antibodies, an occurrence known as escape, can occur and may impede the development of vaccines. To predict which lead to Hie et al. used a machine learning technique for natural processing with two components: grammar (or syntax) meaning semantics) (see Perspective by Kim Przytycka). Three different unsupervised mod...

Characterization of Influenza A Virus Infection through Analysis of Intrahost Viral Evolution and Within-host Infection Dynamics by Ashley Sobel Leonard Department of Biology Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Katia Koelle, Supervisor ___________________________ Nicolas Buchler ___________________________ James Clark ___________________________ Sc...

Hepatitis C is a pandemic human RNA virus, which commonly causes chronic infection and liver disease. The characterization of viral populations that successfully initiate infection, and also those that drive progression to chronicity is instrumental for understanding pathogenesis and vaccine design. A comprehensive and longitudinal analysis of the viral population was conducted in four subjects...

Predicting and constraining RNA virus evolution require understanding the molecular factors that define the mutational landscape accessible to these pathogens. RNA viruses typically have high mutation rates, resulting in frequent production of protein variants with compromised biophysical properties. Their evolution is necessarily constrained by the consequent challenge to protein folding and f...

Viral RNA-dependent RNA polymerases (RdRps) play a central role not only in viral replication, but also in the genetic evolution of viral RNAs. After binding to an RNA template and selecting 5'-triphosphate ribonucleosides, viral RdRps synthesize an RNA copy according to Watson-Crick base-pairing rules. The copy process sometimes deviates from both the base-pairing rules specified by the templa...

EDITORIAL article Front. Virol., 19 May 2023Sec. Viral Diversification and Evolution Volume 3 - 2023 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fviro.2023.1215709

Viral particles (virions) are made of genomic material packaged with proteins, drawn from the pool of proteins in the parent cell. It is well known that when virion concentrations are high, cells can be coinfected with multiple viral strains that can complement each other. Viral genomes can then interact with proteins derived from different strains, in a phenomenon known as phenotypic mixing. B...

Over a period of three and a half years, 348 consecutive children with acute hepatitis were studied. There were 205 boys and 143 girls aged from 3 months to 12 years old. The most common type was hepatitis A, of which there were 281 cases, 81% of the total; there were 41 in the under 4 years old age group (63% of that group), 99 in the 5-8 year old age group (87% of that group) and 141 in the 8...

This paper uses methods drawn from physics to study the life cycle of viruses. The paper analyzes a model of viral infection and evolution using the "grand canonical ensemble" and formalisms from statistical mechanics and thermodynamics. Using this approach we enumerate all possible genetic states of a model virus and host as a function of two independent pressures-immune response and system te...