mSphere of influence: experimental evolution of RNA viruses

Abstract

Gonzalo Moratorio works in the field of experimental evolution of vi-ruses. In this mSphere of Influence article, he reflects on how the papers “Virus at-tenuation by genome-scale changes in codon pair bias” by Coleman et al. (Science320:1784–1787, 2008,https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1155761) and “Codon usage de-termines the mutational robustness, evolutionary capacity, and virulence of an RNAvirus” by Lauring et al. (Cell Host Microbe 12:623–632, 2012,https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chom.2012.10.008) made an impact on his thinking about how to employ syntheticbiology to study experimental evolution of viruses.