ArticlePLoS pathogens2006
The fittest versus the flattest: experimental confirmation of the quasispecies effect with subviral pathogens.
Article in PLoS pathogens, 2006. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 72 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
72 citing papers in PubMed, 194 citations in OpenAlex.
- Exploring RNA modifications in infectious non-coding circular RNAs.RNA biology · 2025Article
- Characterisation of the genetic diversity of citrus viroid VII using amplicon sequencing.Archives of virology · 2024Article
- Quasispecies theory and emerging viruses: challenges and applications.Npj viruses · 2024Review
- Protocell Effects on RNA Folding, Function, and Evolution.Accounts of chemical research · 2024Article
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- Marginal specificity in protein interactions constrains evolution of a paralogous family.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
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- A Virus Is a Community: Diversity within Negative-Sense RNA Virus Populations.Microbiology and molecular biology reviews : MMBR · 2022Review
- Article
- A scenario for the emergence of protoviroids in the RNA world and for their further evolution into viroids and viroid-like RNAs by modular recombinations and mutations.Virus evolution · 2022Review
- Evolutionary Pathways and Trajectories in Antibiotic Resistance.Clinical microbiology reviews · 2021Article
- Why are viral genomes so fragile? The bottleneck hypothesis.PLoS computational biology · 2021Article
- Reassessing species demarcation criteria in viroid taxonomy by pairwise identity matrices.Virus evolution · 2021Article
- Impact of Nucleic Acid Sequencing on Viroid Biology.International journal of molecular sciences · 2020Review
- Adaptation of turnip mosaic potyvirus to a specific niche reduces its genetic and environmental robustness.Virus evolution · 2020Article
- Insights Into Potato Spindle Tuber Viroid Quasi-Species From Infection to Disease.Frontiers in microbiology · 2020Article
- Pest categorisation of non-EU viruses and viroids of potato.EFSA journal. European Food Safety Authority · 2020Article
- Novel Fig-Associated Viroid-Like RNAs Containing Hammerhead Ribozymes in Both Polarity Strands Identified by High-Throughput Sequencing.Frontiers in microbiology · 2020Article
- Viral quasispecies.PLoS genetics · 2019Article
- Article
12 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The "survival of the fittest" is the paradigm of Darwinian evolution in which the best-adapted replicators are favored by natural selection. However, at high mutation rates, the fittest organisms are not necessarily the fastest replicators but rather are those that show the greatest robustness against deleterious mutational effects, even at the cost of a low replication rate. This scenario, dubbed the "survival of the flattest", has so far only been shown to operate in digital organisms. We show that "survival of the flattest" can also occur in biological entities by analyzing the outcome of competition between two viroid species coinfecting the same plant. Under optimal growth conditions, a viroid species characterized by fast population growth and genetic homogeneity outcompeted a viroid species with slow population growth and a high degree of variation. In contrast, the slow-growth species was able to outcompete the fast species when the mutation rate was increased. These experimental results were supported by an in silico model of competing viroid quasispecies.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.