Related Experiment Video
Updated: Sep 5, 2025

Engineering and Evolution of Synthetic Adeno-Associated Virus AAV Gene Therapy Vectors via DNA Family Shuffling
Published on: April 2, 2012
Exploring the dynamic variations of viral genomes via a novel genetic network
Yuyan Zhang1, Jia Wen2, Kun Xi3
1School of Mathematical Science, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China; School of Information Engineering, Suihua University, Suihua 152061, China.
Abstract:
Exploring the dynamic variations of viral genomes utilizing with a phylogenetic analysis is vital to control the pandemic and stop its waves. Genetic network can be applied to depict the complicated evolution relationships of viral genomes. However, current phylogenetic methods cannot handle the cases with deletions effectively. Therefore, the k-mer natural vector is employed to characterize the compositions and distribution features of k-mers occurring in a viral genome, and construct a one-to-one relationship between a viral genome and its k-mer natural vector. Utilizing the k-mer natural vector, we proposed a novel genetic network to investigate the variations of viral genomes in transmission among humans. With the assistance of genetic network, we identified the super-spreaders that were responsible for the pandemic outbreaks all over the world and chose the parental strains to evaluate the effectiveness of diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines. The obtaining results fully demonstrated that our genetic network can truly describe the relationships of viral genomes, effectively simulate virus spread tendency, and trace the transmission routes precisely. In addition, this work indicated that the k-mer natural vector has the ability to capture established hotspots of diversities existing in the viral genomes and understand how genomic contents change over time.
More Related Videos
12:20Bacterial Artificial Chromosomes: A Functional Genomics Tool for the Study of Positive-strand RNA Viruses
Published on: December 29, 2015
09:20Isolation of Next-Generation Gene Therapy Vectors through Engineering, Barcoding, and Screening of Adeno-Associated Virus AAV Capsid Variants
Published on: October 18, 2022
Related Concept Videos
Viral Mutations
Viral Recombination
Size and Structure of Viral Genomes
Retroviruses
Viral Structure
DNA Bacteriophages