Shared quasispecies architecture in experimental and natural RNA virus populations
Samuel Martínez-Alcalá, Iker Atienza-Diez, Pilar Somovilla, Brenda Martínez-González, Celia Perales, Luis F Seoane, Ester Lázaro, Susanna Manrubia · 2026
Read Shared quasispecies architecture in experimental and natural RNA virus populations by Samuel Martínez-Alcalá, Iker Atienza-Diez, Pilar Somovilla, Brenda Martínez-González, Celia Perales, Luis F Seoane, Ester Lázaro, Susanna Manrubia (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13591489.txt.
Description
Samuel Martínez-Alcalá and co-authors compare, in a 2026 study, the inner architecture of two very different RNA virus populations. RNA viruses live as swarms of related variants, called quasispecies, and how that swarm is organized shapes how it evolves. The team rebuilt the variant networks of a bacterial virus grown in the lab and of the COVID-19 virus inside human hosts, using deep sequencing data.
Despite vast differences in genome size, mutation rate, and setting, both swarms share one architecture. A single dominant variant sits at the center, ringed by layers of ever rarer variants as their distance from the center grows. The networks match in both shape and measured detail, forming a clear hierarchy. The authors argue that this common blueprint flows from the geometry of sequence space itself, and that network thinking can forecast viral evolution better than diversity counts alone.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Samuel Martínez-Alcalá, Iker Atienza-Diez, Pilar Somovilla, Brenda Martínez-González, Celia Perales, Luis F Seoane, Ester Lázaro, Susanna Manrubia |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 61 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |