mSphere of Influence: Experimental Evolution of RNA Viruses

Gonzalo Moratorio

doi:10.1128/mSphere.00179-20

mSphere of Influence: Experimental Evolution of RNA Viruses

mSphere. 2020 Mar 11;5(2):e00179-20. doi: 10.1128/mSphere.00179-20.

Author

Gonzalo Moratorio^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Institut Pasteur de Montevideo, Laboratorio de Evolución Experimental de Virus, Montevideo, Uruguay moratorio@pasteur.edu.uy.
² Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de la República, Laboratorio de Virología Molecular, Montevideo, Uruguay.

Abstract

Gonzalo Moratorio works in the field of experimental evolution of viruses. In this mSphere of Influence article, he reflects on how the papers "Virus attenuation by genome-scale changes in codon pair bias" by Coleman et al. (Science 320:1784-1787, 2008, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1155761) and "Codon usage determines the mutational robustness, evolutionary capacity, and virulence of an RNA virus" by Lauring et al. (Cell Host Microbe 12:623-632, 2012, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chom.2012.10.008) made an impact on his thinking about how to employ synthetic biology to study experimental evolution of viruses.

Keywords: codon pair bias; mutational robustness; synthetic biology; virus attenuation.

MeSH terms

Animals
Codon Usage*
Directed Molecular Evolution*
Host-Pathogen Interactions / genetics*
Mice
RNA Viruses / genetics*
Virulence