How Ebola has been evolving in West Africa

Si-Qing Liu; Simon Rayner; Bo Zhang

doi:10.1016/j.tim.2015.05.003

How Ebola has been evolving in West Africa

Trends Microbiol. 2015 Jul;23(7):387-8. doi: 10.1016/j.tim.2015.05.003. Epub 2015 May 15.

Authors

Si-Qing Liu¹, Simon Rayner¹, Bo Zhang²

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Etiology and Biosafety for Emerging and Highly Infectious Diseases, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan 430071, China.
² Key Laboratory of Etiology and Biosafety for Emerging and Highly Infectious Diseases, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan 430071, China. Electronic address: zhangbo@wh.iov.cn.

PMID: 25986056
DOI: 10.1016/j.tim.2015.05.003

Abstract

The ongoing Ebola outbreak in West Africa has generated fears of a global epidemic. Particularly, estimates of higher substitution rates have raised concerns about increased transmissibility or virulence. A recent study using a more comprehensive datasets demonstrates lower variation, highlighting the importance of representative datasets and limitations of computational modelling.

Keywords: Ebola; West Africa; evolution; low variation; nucleotide substitutions rate.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Comment

MeSH terms

Ebolavirus / genetics*
Hemorrhagic Fever, Ebola / virology*
Humans
Mutation Rate*