ArticlePLoS biology2023
Cheating leads to the evolution of multipartite viruses.
Article in PLoS biology, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 18 citations in OpenAlex.
- The Evolutionary and Ecological Consequences of Cooperation.The American naturalist · 2026Review
- Behavioural ecology in the twenty-first century.Nature ecology & evolution · 2025Review
- Defective but promising: evaluating the utility of currently available bioinformatic pipelines for detecting defective viral genomes in RNA-Seq data.The Journal of general virology · 2025Article
- Living Together Apart: Quantitative Perspectives on the Costs and Benefits of a Multipartite Genome Organization in Viruses.Viruses · 2025Article
- A phylogenetic approach to comparative genomics.Nature reviews. Genetics · 2025Review
- Relative frequency dynamics and loading of beet necrotic yellow vein virus genomic RNAs during the acquisition by its vectorJournal of virology · 2025Article
- Navigating a Fine Balance: Point-Mutant Cheater Viruses Disrupt the Viral Replication Cycle.Molecular biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Rapid glycoprotein evolution enables variant interactions in herpes simplex virus type 1.Virus evolution · 2025Article
- Robust Approaches to the Quantitative Analysis of Genome Formula Variation in Multipartite and Segmented Viruses.Viruses · 2024Article
- Evolution of a novel engineered tripartite viral genome of a torradovirus.Virus evolution · 2024Article
- Conserved untranslated regions of multipartite viruses: Natural markers of novel viral genomic components and tags of viral evolution.Virus evolution · 2024Article
- New clades of viruses infecting the obligatory biotrophVirus evolution · 2024Article
- Open questions in the social lives of viruses.Journal of evolutionary biology · 2023Review
- Equilibria and oscillations in cheat-cooperator dynamics.Evolution letters · 2023Article
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Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
In multipartite viruses, the genome is split into multiple segments, each of which is transmitted via a separate capsid. The existence of multipartite viruses poses a problem, because replication is only possible when all segments are present within the same host. Given this clear cost, why is multipartitism so common in viruses? Most previous hypotheses try to explain how multipartitism could provide an advantage. In so doing, they require scenarios that are unrealistic and that cannot explain viruses with more than 2 multipartite segments. We show theoretically that selection for cheats, which avoid producing a shared gene product, but still benefit from gene products produced by other genomes, can drive the evolution of both multipartite and segmented viruses. We find that multipartitism can evolve via cheating under realistic conditions and does not require unreasonably high coinfection rates or any group-level benefit. Furthermore, the cheating hypothesis is consistent with empirical patterns of cheating and multipartitism across viruses. More broadly, our results show how evolutionary conflict can drive new patterns of genome organisation in viruses and elsewhere.
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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.