Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Lagos bat virus
Duvenhage virus
It would seem that we do not know enough about the origin and phylogeny
of the different classes of viruses to create a true classification, wherein
viruses of a class share a common set of inherited relationships. There is,
however, hope for a better future. Highly innovative work in the field of
viral phylogeny is proceeding along a variety of different approaches, includ-
ing: inferring retroviral phylogeny by sequence divergences of nucleic acids
and proteins in related viral species [121]; tracing the acquisition of genes in
DNA viruses [122]; and dating viruses by the appearance of viral-specific
antibodies in ancient host cells [113]. Because viruses evolve very rapidly, it
is possible to trace the evolution of some viruses, with precision, over inter-
vals as short as centuries or even decades [123]. It should be noted that
before the advent of ribosomal sequence analysis, and as recently as the early
1970s, bacterial phylogeny was considered a hopeless field [21]. Bacteria
were grouped by morphology, nutritional requirements, and enzymatic reac-
tions (e.g. hemolysis, coagulase) without much attention to phylogenetic
relationships. The field of viral phylogeny is quickly catching up with the
phylogeny of living organisms.
