ReviewJournal of virology2011
What does virus evolution tell us about virus origins?
Review in Journal of virology, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 72 papers.
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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.
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Who cites it
72 citing papers in PubMed.
- Low variability in the capsid gene of a generalist densovirus across lepidopteran hosts and geographic regions.Archives of virology · 2026Article
- Vicennial metagenomic time series unveils evolutionary dynamics of giant viruses in a freshwater ecosystem.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Evolutionary dynamics of coxsackievirus A24 variant associated with acute hemorrhagic conjunctivitis in Brazil.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Reassessing viral origins and evolutionary placement in the tree of life.Antonie van Leeuwenhoek · 2026Review
- Prophage diversity in poultry-associatedFrontiers in microbiology · 2026Article
- Machine learning enables scalable and systematic hierarchical virus taxonomy.Nature biotechnology · 2025Article
- deepBreaks identifies and prioritizes genotype-phenotype associations using machine learning.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- The role of the gut microbiota in regulating responses to vaccination: current knowledge and future directions.The FEBS journal · 2025Review
- Birth of protein folds and functions in the virome.Nature · 2024Article
- Molecular evolution and phylogeographic analysis of wheat dwarf virus.Frontiers in microbiology · 2024Article
- Optimized Recovery of Viral DNA and RNA from Blood Plasma for Viral Metagenomics.Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.) · 2024Article
- Global molecular evolution and phylogeographic analysis of barley yellow dwarf virus based on the cp and mp genes.Virology journal · 2023Article
- Article
- Viral community composition of hypersaline lakes.Virus evolution · 2023Article
- Article
- An overview of dinucleotide and codon usage in all viruses.Archives of virology · 2022Review
- Deep-Time Structural Evolution of Retroviral and Filoviral Surface Envelope Proteins.Journal of virology · 2022Article
- RdRp (RNA-dependent RNA polymerase): A key target providing anti-virals for the management of various viral diseases.Journal of molecular structure · 2022Review
- Towards an integrative view of virus phenotypes.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2022Review
- Evolution and host adaptability of plant RNA viruses: Research insights on compositional biases.Computational and structural biotechnology journal · 2022Review
12 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Despite recent advances in our understanding of diverse aspects of virus evolution, particularly on the epidemiological scale, revealing the ultimate origins of viruses has proven to be a more intractable problem. Herein, I review some current ideas on the evolutionary origins of viruses and assess how well these theories accord with what we know about the evolution of contemporary viruses. I note the growing evidence for the theory that viruses arose before the last universal cellular ancestor (LUCA). This ancient origin theory is supported by the presence of capsid architectures that are conserved among diverse RNA and DNA viruses and by the strongly inverse relationship between genome size and mutation rate across all replication systems, such that pre-LUCA genomes were probably both small and highly error prone and hence RNA virus-like. I also highlight the advances that are needed to come to a better understanding of virus origins, most notably the ability to accurately infer deep evolutionary history from the phylogenetic analysis of conserved protein structures.
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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.