Abstract
There is currently much debate about the timescales of virus evolution. Some viruses may have co-evolved with human populations for tens of thousands of years, or even with our primate ancestors over many millions of years. However, calibrations of the rate of short-term virus evolution lead to estimates of dates for viral ancestors that are orders of magnitude more recent, and a number of the proposed host-virus co-divergence scenarios have been questioned. Other considerations indicate that the proposed recent timescales for virus evolution are implausible, that co-divergence has been rejected prematurely, and that long-term evolutionary rates are very much slower than short-term rates. There is a need to understand the biological basis of this discrepancy and to develop evolutionary models that can accommodate this.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 436-441 |
Number of pages | 6 |
Journal | Current Opinion in Virology |
Volume | 1 |
Issue number | 5 |
Early online date | 9 Nov 2011 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Nov 2011 |
Keywords
- ENDOGENOUS LENTIVIRUS
- MAMMALIAN GENOMES
- MOLECULAR EVOLUTION
- VIRAL EVOLUTION
- JC VIRUS
- AIDS VIRUSES
- GENUS SAGUINUS
- PHYLOGENETIC EVIDENCE
- ORIGINS
- ORDERED RNA STRUCTURE