Review

Nature Reviews Genetics 10, 540-550 (August 2009) | doi:10.1038/nrg2583

Article series: Modelling

Evolutionary analysis of the dynamics of viral infectious disease

Oliver G. Pybus1 & Andrew Rambaut2  About the authors

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Many organisms that cause infectious diseases, particularly RNA viruses, mutate so rapidly that their evolutionary and ecological behaviours are inextricably linked. Consequently, aspects of the transmission and epidemiology of these pathogens are imprinted on the genetic diversity of their genomes. Large-scale empirical analyses of the evolutionary dynamics of important pathogens are now feasible owing to the increasing availability of pathogen sequence data and the development of new computational and statistical methods of analysis. In this Review, we outline the questions that can be answered using viral evolutionary analysis across a wide range of biological scales.

Author affiliations

  1. Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PS, UK.
    Email: oliver.pybus@zoo.ox.ac.uk
  2. Institute for Evolutionary Biology, University of Edinburgh, Kings Buildings, Ashworth Laboratories, West Mains Road, Edinburgh EH9 3JT, UK.
    Email: a.rambaut@ed.ac.uk

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