Why are RNA virus mutation rates so damn high?

By Siobain Duffy. PLoS Biology, 2018

626 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The high mutation rate of RNA viruses is credited with their evolvability and virulence. This Primer, however, discusses recent evidence that this is, in part, a byproduct of selection for faster genomic replication.

Subfields: Animal Science and Zoology, Genetics, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7271e159540673d3b3e831f797e068b52d41027a

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1. Kit-San Yuen
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5. D. Jin
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7. Sunhee Lee
8. H. Kim

Citations in the corpus

• Zoonotic origins of human coronaviruses (2020, result): “Compared to SARS-CoV with a high mutation rate [72] , the mutation rate of SARS-CoV-2 is apparently lower, suggestive of a higher level of adaptation to humans.”
• The Impact of Mutations in SARS-CoV-2 Spike on Viral Infectivity and Antigenicity (2020, neutral): “RNA viruses are known to have higher mutation rates than DNA viruses (Duffy, 2018; Lauring and Andino, 2010).”
• Current Status of Epidemiology, Diagnosis, Therapeutics, and Vaccines for Novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) (2020, background): “Another major hurdle for vaccine development is higher mutation rates of RNA viruses compared to DNA viruses, resulting in higher genetic diversity [94].”