Related Experiment Video
Updated: Dec 26, 2025

Isolation of Fidelity Variants of RNA Viruses and Characterization of Virus Mutation Frequency
Published on: June 16, 2011
mSphere of Influence: Experimental Evolution of RNA Viruses
1Institut Pasteur de Montevideo, Laboratorio de Evolución Experimental de Virus, Montevideo, Uruguay moratorio@pasteur.edu.uy.
Abstract:
Gonzalo Moratorio works in the field of experimental evolution of viruses. In this mSphere of Influence article, he reflects on how the papers "Virus attenuation by genome-scale changes in codon pair bias" by Coleman et al. (Science 320:1784-1787, 2008, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1155761) and "Codon usage determines the mutational robustness, evolutionary capacity, and virulence of an RNA virus" by Lauring et al. (Cell Host Microbe 12:623-632, 2012, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chom.2012.10.008) made an impact on his thinking about how to employ synthetic biology to study experimental evolution of viruses.
Related Concept Videos
Viral Mutations
Viruses with RNA Genomes
Size and Structure of Viral Genomes
Bacterial RNA Polymerase
In most genes, the transcription site is a single base present upstream of the coding sequence. Though RNAP is a catalytically efficient enzyme, it does not recognize...
Bacterial RNA Polymerase
Viruses of Archaea

