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28 Jun 2021

Setting it Straight: Virus variants, the different dynamics

Viruses use a diversity of survival strategies that allow them to persist and ‘succeed’ in nature. This survival game can be broken down into two broad themes. The first concerns those characteristics that facilitate transmission of the infection between individuals, while the second deals with the molecular mechanisms viruses have evolved so they can multiply and persist within us. Of course, these aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive functions, but it is a useful separation as we think about how virus mutants emerge.