Viral genetics articles from across Nature Portfolio

Fur farming represents an important hub of cross-species transmission for viral zoonoses.

Rise of new viral strains is a major public health challenge, demanding advanced detection and forecasting methods. This study shows how examining communities within networks of viral mutations enables early detection of emerging strains.

Prophage-encoded anti-phage defence systems in Staphylococcus aureus protect hosts from superinfection but also prevent autoimmunity via an overlapping gene.

Lillian Musila highlights a paper by Quick et al., which reported the use of portable nanopore sequencing for on-site, real-time genomic surveillance during the 2014–2016 Ebola virus epidemic.

This Genome Watch highlights how the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic laid the groundwork for continued use of real-time genomic epidemiology for public health responses in low-and-middle-income countries.

How viruses are related, and how they have evolved and spread over time, can be investigated using phylogenetics. Here, we set out how genomic analyses should be used during an epidemic and propose that phylogenetic insights from the early stages of an outbreak should heed all of the available epidemiological information.

A study reports on the suitability of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a platform for the assembly and maintenance of diverse RNA virus genomes, including SARS-CoV-2.

A new study in Cell reports that sense-strand Piwi-interacting RNAs have an important role in protecting the germline genome from invading retroviruses.

In a study in Nature Microbiology, Setoh et al. use deep mutational scanning to speed up viral evolution and identify key determinants of host tropism in Zika virus.