Global advance of shrimp virus follows evolutionary biology predictions
Tuesday, November 2, 2010 - 08:30
in Biology & Nature
White spot syndrome virus (WSSV) has a devastating impact on shrimp farming throughout the world. What makes the situation even more serious is that the virus seems to become more aggressive as the epidemic spreads, contrary to other viruses, such as flu virus, that gradually die out. Scientists in the Netherlands have discovered that the fitness of the virus increases over time and the genome shrinks, in a pattern similar to theoretical predictions from evolutionary biology.