Virus as populations : composition, complexity, dynamics, and biological implications

✍ Scribed by Domingo, Esteban

• Publisher: Elsevier, Academic Press
• Year: 2016
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 414
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Virus as Populations: Composition, Complexity, Dynamics, and Biological Implications explains fundamental concepts that arise from regarding viruses as complex populations when replicating in infected hosts. Fundamental phenomena in virus behavior, such as adaptation to changing environments, capacity to produce disease, probability to be transmitted or response to treatment, depend on virus population numbers and in the variations of such population numbers. Concepts such as quasispecies dynamics, mutations rates, viral fitness, the effect of bottleneck events, population numbers in virus transmission and disease emergence, new antiviral strategies such as lethal mutagenesis, and extensions of population heterogeneity to nonviral systems are included. These main concepts of the book are framed in recent observations on general virus diversity derived from metagenomic studies, and current views on the origin of viruses and the role of viruses in the evolution of the biosphere.

• Features current views on the key steps in the origin of life and origins of viruses
• Includes examples relating ancestral features of viruses with their current adaptive capacity
• Explains complex phenomena in an organized and coherent fashion that is easy to comprehend and enjoyable to read
• Considers quasispecies as a framework to understand virus adaptability and disease processes

✦ Table of Contents

Content:
Front Matter,Copyright,Foreword,AcknowledgmentsEntitled to full textChapter 1 - Introduction to Virus Origins and Their Role in Biological Evolution, Pages 1-33
Chapter 2 - Molecular Basis of Genetic Variation of Viruses: Error-Prone Replication, Pages 35-71
Chapter 3 - Darwinian Principles Acting on Highly Mutable Viruses, Pages 73-122
Chapter 4 - Interaction of Virus Populations with Their Hosts, Pages 123-168
Chapter 5 - Viral Fitness as a Measure of Adaptation, Pages 169-195
Chapter 6 - Virus Population Dynamics Examined with Experimental Model Systems, Pages 197-225
Chapter 7 - Long-Term Virus Evolution in Nature, Pages 227-262
Chapter 8 - Quasispecies Dynamics in Disease Prevention and Control, Pages 263-297
Chapter 9 - Trends in Antiviral Strategies, Pages 299-338
Chapter 10 - Collective Population Effects in Nonviral Systems, Pages 339-362
Further Reading, Pages 363-365
Author Index, Pages 367-397
Subject Index, Pages 399-412