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Updated: Jul 6, 2026

Isolation of Fidelity Variants of RNA Viruses and Characterization of Virus Mutation Frequency
Published on: June 16, 2011
Rates of evolutionary change in viruses: patterns and determinants
Siobain Duffy1, Laura A Shackelton, Edward C Holmes
1Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics, Department of Biology, Mueller Laboratory, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802, USA.
Abstract:
Understanding the factors that determine the rate at which genomes generate and fix mutations provides important insights into key evolutionary mechanisms. We review our current knowledge of the rates of mutation and substitution, as well as their determinants, in RNA viruses, DNA viruses and retroviruses. We show that the high rate of nucleotide substitution in RNA viruses is matched by some DNA viruses, suggesting that evolutionary rates in viruses are explained by diverse aspects of viral biology, such as genomic architecture and replication speed, and not simply by polymerase fidelity.
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