25 April 2023

Cheating leads to the evolution of multipartite viruses. This paper proposing an explanation to how some viruses end up splitting their genomes into separate pieces packaged separately. Previous explanations of why this could be advantageous seemed forced to me, so the idea that this is the consequence of extreme “cheating” by viral free riders is pretty intriguing. A cool story of ecological dynamics, game theory concepts, evolution, viruses, and math!
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002092

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