Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Publications of R. C. Lewontin
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I Historical foundations and perspectives
- Part II Genotypes to phenotypes: new genetic and bioinformatic advances
- Part III Phenotypes to fitness: genetics and ecology of populations
- Part IV Genes, organisms, and environment: evolutionary case studies
- Part V Applied population biology: biodiversity and food, disease, and health
- 17 Conservation biology: the impact of population biology and a current perspective
- 18 The emergence of modern human mortality patterns
- 19 Units of selection and the evolution of virulence
- 20 Evolutionary genetics and emergence of RNA virus diseases
- 21 A scientific adventure: a fifty years study of human evolution
- 22 Geneticists and the biology of race, 1900–1924
- Index
20 - Evolutionary genetics and emergence of RNA virus diseases
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Publications of R. C. Lewontin
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I Historical foundations and perspectives
- Part II Genotypes to phenotypes: new genetic and bioinformatic advances
- Part III Phenotypes to fitness: genetics and ecology of populations
- Part IV Genes, organisms, and environment: evolutionary case studies
- Part V Applied population biology: biodiversity and food, disease, and health
- 17 Conservation biology: the impact of population biology and a current perspective
- 18 The emergence of modern human mortality patterns
- 19 Units of selection and the evolution of virulence
- 20 Evolutionary genetics and emergence of RNA virus diseases
- 21 A scientific adventure: a fifty years study of human evolution
- 22 Geneticists and the biology of race, 1900–1924
- Index
Summary
Introduction
RNA viruses are ubiquitous intracellular parasites responsible for many infectious diseases of humans. This is most publicly visible with the AIDS viruses, HIV-1 and HIV-2, which currently infect some 36 million people worldwide, including more than 30% of the adult population in parts of sub-Saharan Africa (Piot et al. 2001), and hepatitis C virus (HCV) which has ∼175 million sufferers globally, many of whom will go on to develop serious liver diseases (WHO 1997). To these ailments can be added myriad other infections, from the benign to the lethal, including many that seem to have appeared only recently. Given the pace at which human ecology is changing, it is evident that more such “emerging diseases” will arise in the future, both in humans and wildlife species (Daszak et al. 2000, Morse 1994).
The success of RNA viruses may in large part be due to their remarkable genetic flexibility. In contrast to DNA-based life forms, the evolution of RNA viruses is fueled by extremely rapid rates of mutation, with around one error occurring during each round of genome replication (Drake and Holland 1999).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Evolution of Population Biology , pp. 391 - 410Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004