New research from Western University provides evidence viruses may be evolving much like a social network, creating a web of intersecting subtypes. (credit: Pete Linforth / Pixabay )
New research from Western University provides evidence viruses may be evolving much like a social network, creating a web of intersecting subtypes. (credit: Pete Linforth / Pixabay ) - New research from Western provides evidence viruses may be evolving much like a social network, creating a web of intersecting subtypes. (credit: Usis/iStock) - Researchers from Western University may have discovered a new meaning to the social media phrase, "going viral." New research from Western University suggests some viruses evolve more like a dynamic social network - rather than a rigid tree, as was previously believed - recombining with one another to create a web of intersecting subtypes. This work has implications for epidemiology and public health, not just for HIV-1 but for other viruses as well, because it influences how we track the way viruses move through the population. Previously, when epidemiologists look at the evolution of viruses, they classify variants like a growing tree - each variant with one or more mutations from its parent branching out into new variants. By studying full-length genomes of HIV-1 from around the world, especially regions where sequencing has been less common, a team at Western's Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry led by Art Poon, demonstrated that recombination is much more prevalent than previously believed. "If people get infected with two or more subtypes of HIV, they exchange parts of their genomes to create mosaic forms that we call 'recombinants,'" said Abayomi Olabode, lead author and post-doctoral associate in Poon's lab at Western.
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