Question

You are a researcher studying the coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2). You want to know whether the virus frequently jumps from one mammal species to another or whether different strains remain specific to certain hosts over evolutionary time. How could you use phylogenetic methods to test this?

Why does this matter for medical doctors and the world to know ?

Answer 1

The viruses gain ability to spread efficiently within a new host that was not previously exposed or susceptible. These transfers involve either increased exposure or the acquisition of variations allowing them to overcome barriers to infection of new hosts. Viral host switching is understood by the recent avian epizootics of high-pathogenicity strains of H5N1 influenza A, in which many spillover human cases and deaths have been recorded. Epidemiological data suggest toll on human populations would be very high if the H5N1 virus acquired efficient human-to-human transmissibility while retaining high human pathogenicity.

Many other human viruses (like measles and smallpox)that may have originated in domesticated animals or wil dlife in The phylogenetic network methods are capable of enabling the visualization of a multitude of optimal trees (evolution). This network is based on mitochondrial and Y chromosomal data, allowed us to reconstruct the prehistoric population movements in the world. The phylogenetic network approach found application in the reconstruction of language prehistory and is now timely to apply the phylogenetic network approach to virological data to explore how this method can contribute to an understanding of coronavirus evolution.prehistoric times. Therefore,it is important to know how viruses enter and spread in new hosts, including the demographic factors, host and cellular properties, and the controls of virus transmission.

The phylogenetic studies are useful for medical doctors and experts.The evolutionary knowledge guides research and the treatment decisions are based on controlled studies on humans, not on theory or on experiments performed on model organisms alone. Darwinian medicine does not often give direct practice guidelines.The evolution helps doctors to make sense of why a disease exists, what environments increase the risk, and how treatments work. It has direct applications to medical research and also provides a missing paradigm for understanding why our bodies are vulnerable to disease.

The technologies for tracing phylogenies have applications to antibiotic resistance and to pathogen evolution.They are powerful in revealing the origins of emerging diseases.Researchers use phylogenetic methods to analyze genetic data and used in conjunction with evolutionary theory, but also used independently to construct phylogenies with new applications of genetic medicine. Doctors understands these phylogenetic methods and the evolutionary biology behind them and is better prepared to treat the diseases.

Coronavirus genome sequencing efforts expanded our insight into the CoV phylogeny and resulted in the definition of several classifications. The greatest contribution of new strains was derived from discovered bat coronavirus (BtCoV), which may be the source of most.The high diversity of coronaviruses is attributable to three viral traits. The first characteristic is potentially high mutation rates associated with RNA replication, generally estimated as 10−3 to 10−5.  Second, recombination frequencies within coronavirus family have been calculated to be as high as 25% during infection, likely the result of discontinuous RNA transcription and the presence of full length and subgenomic negative strand RNAs that allow for frequent strand switching and recombination between viral genomes.Thirdly, as the largest of the RNA viruses at 27–31 kb, coronaviruses have both increased opportunity for change and room for modification, evidenced by the presence of numerous unique open reading frames and protein functions encoded toward the 3′ end of the genome.