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Reply to ‘Evolutionary stasis of viruses?’

Nature Reviews Microbiology volume 17, pages 329–330 (2019)Cite this article

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Our Opinion article (Prisoners of war — host adaptation and its constraints on virus evolution. Nat. Rev. Microbiol. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41579-018-0120-2 (2018))1 describes host adaptation and its potential role in shaping long-term evolution of viruses. Holmes and Duchêne’s correspondence (Evolutionary stasis of viruses? Nat. Rev. Microbiol. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41579-019-0168-7 (2019))2 closely concurs that viruses are fast-evolving and diverse ancient entities, constrained by host adaptation and that various methodological artefacts can influence rate measurements. The more than 1 million-fold range in evolutionary rates observed in viruses far exceeds those typically observed in cellular genes3. This contrast prompted us to advance the perspective that the adaptability of viruses, intensity of fitness selection and large effective population sizes drive sequence change in a quantitatively different way from macroorganisms. Including the host in our model places unfamiliar constraints on virus-centric accounts of evolution, where over the longest timescales, rates approach those of their hosts as viral adaptation tracks their evolution.

Holmes and Duchêne note that many RNA viruses exhibit limited sequence similarity. It is, however, remarkable how conserved viral genomes can be given the ancient integration times of many endogenous viruses. Their sequences should be completely unrecognizable if their longer-term evolutionary rates were similar to their short-term rates4.

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References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Peter Simmonds

  2. Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Science, Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand

    Pakorn Aiewsakun

  3. Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Aris Katzourakis

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  1. Peter Simmonds
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  2. Pakorn Aiewsakun
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  3. Aris Katzourakis
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Correspondence to Peter Simmonds or Aris Katzourakis.

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Simmonds, P., Aiewsakun, P. & Katzourakis, A. Reply to ‘Evolutionary stasis of viruses?’. Nat Rev Microbiol 17, 329–330 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41579-019-0169-6

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