natural selection
- Editor's Pick Research Article | Ecological and Evolutionary ScienceDiscovery and Genomic Characterization of a 382-Nucleotide Deletion in ORF7b and ORF8 during the Early Evolution of SARS-CoV-2
During the SARS epidemic in 2003/2004, a number of deletions were observed in ORF8 of SARS-CoV, and eventually deletion variants became predominant, leading to the hypothesis that ORF8 was an evolutionary hot spot for adaptation of SARS-CoV to humans. However, due to the successful control of the SARS epidemic, the importance of these deletions for the epidemiological fitness of SARS-CoV in humans could not be established. The emergence...