Virus Evolution

Virus Evolution is a new Open Access journal focusing on the long-term evolution of viruses, viruses as a model system for studying evolutionary processes, viral molecular epidemiology and environmental virology.

The aim of the journal is to provide a forum for original research papers, reviews, commentaries and a venue for in-depth discussion on the topics relevant to virus evolution.

The journal will cover but not be limited to the following four topics:

1.Long-term evolution of viruses and virus taxonomy, host-virus co-evolution, co-phylogeny of viruses and hosts, paleovirology, and genus-level phylogenetics, origins of viruses and virus genes, and evolution of virus genome structure.

2.Viruses as model systems for studying evolutionary processes, experimental evolution studies, virus population genetics, virus evolutionary theory, evolution of mutation rates and lethal mutagenesis, virus robustness and evolvability, virulence evolution, virus life history evolution, phage systems and phage therapy.

3.Virus molecular epidemiology including phylodynamics, reconstructing and tracking virus spread and transmission using virus genomes, forensic analysis of virus transmission, cross-species transmission, wildlife virus disease, evolution and spread of anti-virus drug resistance, evolution of immune escape and antigenetic drift, vaccine escape, and virus evolution within infected individuals.

4.Environmental virology including metagenomics, virus discovery, virus molecular ecology, marine virology and virus microbiome.