Evolution of fast mutating replicators—RNA viruses and the RNA world

Susanna C. Manrubia

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2006, vol. 371, issue 1, 80-83

Abstract: In the last two decades, viruses have become the model system to witness evolution in the laboratory. Large population sizes, high mutation rates, and short generation times are the three features that permit to carry out in vitro experiments under controlled conditions. In this contribution we briefly review a number of recent experiments that open new prospectives in our understanding of molecular evolutionary mechanisms, in their dependence with population dynamics and quasispecies organization, and in the interaction between heterogeneous populations and the environment. One of the possible origins of RNA viruses is a hypothetical RNA world, previous to our present DNA world, where information coding and catalytic functions would be simultaneously performed by RNA molecules.

Keywords: RNA viruses; Evolutionary dynamics; Molecular quasispecies; RNA world (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437106005140
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only. Journal offers the option of making the article available online on Science direct for a fee of $3,000

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:371:y:2006:i:1:p:80-83

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2006.04.092

Access Statistics for this article

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications is currently edited by K. A. Dawson, J. O. Indekeu, H.E. Stanley and C. Tsallis

More articles in Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().