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Virus evolution

The importance of being erroneous

Nature volume 420, pages 367–369 (2002)Cite this article

Viruses must mutate to survive in the face of attack by their host's immune system. A new model suggests that the viral mutation rate is optimized in an evolutionary trade-off between adaptability and genomic integrity.

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Figure 1: The evolution of viral genomic mutation rates.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Science, ETH Zürich, Zürich, CH-8092, Switzerland

    Sebastian Bonhoeffer

  2. Department of Biology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 19104, Pennsylvania, USA

    Paul Sniegowski

Authors
  1. Sebastian Bonhoeffer
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  2. Paul Sniegowski
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Bonhoeffer, S., Sniegowski, P. The importance of being erroneous. Nature 420, 367–369 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/420367a

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