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Updated: May 29, 2025

Isolation of Fidelity Variants of RNA Viruses and Characterization of Virus Mutation Frequency
Published on: June 16, 2011
Selective Diversity in RNA Viruses: Do They Know How to Evolve? A Hypothesis
1Molecular Plant Pathology Laboratory, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, Beltsville, Maryland, USA.
Abstract:
Genetic diversity of viral populations is almost unanimously attributed to the build-up of random mutations along with accidental recombination events. This passive role of viruses in the selection of viable genotypes is widely acknowledged. According to the hypothesis presented here, populations of steady-state error copies of a master viral sequence would have a dominant mutant rather than a random pool of heterogeneous viral genomes with changes scattered uniformly without any preferential distribution. It would let viruses face the selection stage of host surveillance having a preceding set of potential survivors or "guard" genomes among an ordinary cloud of random quasispecies.
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