We are surrounded by microorganisms that adapt in their struggle to survive. In plants and animals,such adaptations can hold thousands of years; in microorganisms, they sometimes occur within weeks. To understand such rapid evolution, and we need unusual theoretical frameworks and direct observations of evolutionary dynamics. The Research Group is developing such methods and is applying them to analyze sequence data from influenza and human immunodeficiency virus populations. The results provide insights into the properties of the evolutionary process and make it possible to predict the composition of future virus populations.
Source: phys.org