Backbone of RNA viruses uncovered

Zeller, Mark; Andersen, Kristian G.

doi:10.1038/d41586-018-03923-w

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04 April 2018

Backbone of RNA viruses uncovered

The evolutionary history of viruses is largely unknown. Large-scale discovery of vertebrate RNA viruses shows that, although viruses often jump between hosts, most have co-evolved with their hosts over millions of years

Mark Zeller⁰ &
Kristian G. Andersen¹

Mark Zeller
1. Mark Zeller is in the Department of Immunology and Microbiology, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, California 92037, USA.
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Kristian G. Andersen
1. Kristian G. Andersen is in the Department of Immunology and Microbiology, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, California 92037, USA, and in the Department of Integrative Structural and Computational Biology, The Scripps Research Institute, and at the Scripps Translational Science Institute.
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Many human diseases, from the common cold to deadly haemorrhagic fevers, are caused by RNA viruses. Most of these viruses are thought to have originated from close relatives that infected mammals¹^,², and so the majority of virus-discovery studies have focused on mammals and birds³. RNA viruses, however, are probably older than the last common ancestor of life on Earth⁴^,⁵. Detailed genetic information for RNA viruses from other classes of vertebrate is sorely needed if we are to fully understand long-term virus evolution. In a paper in Nature, Shi et al.⁶ report the discovery of previously unidentified vertebrate RNA viruses from across evolutionary timescales.

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Nature 556, 182-183 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-03923-w

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