Over the years, agriculture across the world has been compromised by a succession of
devastating epidemics caused by new viruses that spilled over from reservoir species or by new …

For virus infections of multicellular hosts, narrow genetic bottlenecks during transmission and
within-host spread appear to be widespread. These bottlenecks will affect the maintenance …

High throughput sequencing (HTS) has revolutionised virus detection and discovery, allowing
for the untargeted characterisation of whole viromes. Viral metagenomics studies have …

The ‘independent action hypothesis’ (IAH) states that each pathogen individual has a non-zero
probability of causing host death and that pathogen individuals act independently. IAH …

Background Conjugation plays a major role in the transmission of plasmids encoding
antibiotic resistance genes in both clinical and general settings. The conjugation efficiency is …

Effective population size (N e ) determines the strength of genetic drift and the frequency of
co-infection by multiple genotypes, making it a key factor in viral evolution. Experimental …

Superinfection exclusion (SIE), the ability of an established virus infection to interfere with a
secondary infection by the same or a closely related virus, has been described for different …

While synonymous mutations were long thought to be without phenotypic consequences,
there is growing evidence they can affect gene expression, protein folding, and ultimately the …

A multicellular organism is not a monolayer of cells in a flask; it is a complex, spatially structured
environment, offering both challenges and opportunities for viruses to thrive. Whereas …

Mutations with large fitness benefits and mutations occurring at high rates may both cause
parallel evolution, but their contribution is predicted to depend on population size. Moreover, …