Kabengele Ketty, Turner Wendy C, Turner Paul E, Ogbunugafor C Brandon
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University, 165 Prospect Street, New Haven, CT 06511, United States.
U.S. Geological Survey, Wisconsin Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit, Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1630 Linden Drive, Madison, WI 53706, United States.
Virus Evol. 2024 Dec 6;10(1):veae105. doi: 10.1093/ve/veae105. eCollection 2024.
Different theoretical frameworks have been invoked to guide the study of virus evolution. Three of the more prominent ones are (i) the evolution of virulence, (ii) life history theory, and (iii) the generalism-specialism dichotomy. All involve purported tradeoffs between traits that define the evolvability and constraint of virus-associated phenotypes. However, as popular as these frameworks are, there is a surprising paucity of direct laboratory tests of the frameworks that support their utility as broadly applicable theoretical pillars that can guide our understanding of disease evolution. In this study, we conduct a meta-analysis of direct experimental evidence for these three frameworks across several widely studied virus-host systems: plant viruses, fungal viruses, animal viruses, and bacteriophages. We extracted 60 datasets from 28 studies and found a range of relationships between traits in different analysis categories (e.g., frameworks, virus-host systems). Our work demonstrates that direct evidence for relationships between traits is highly idiosyncratic and specific to the host-virus system and theoretical framework. Consequently, scientists researching viral pathogens from different taxonomic groups might reconsider their allegiance to these canons as the basis for expectation, explanation, or prediction. Future efforts could benefit from consistent definitions, and from developing frameworks that are compatible with the evidence and apply to particular biological and ecological contexts.
不同的理论框架已被用来指导病毒进化的研究。其中三个较为突出的框架是：（i）毒力进化，（ii）生活史理论，以及（iii）泛化 - 特化二分法。所有这些框架都涉及到定义病毒相关表型的可进化性和限制的性状之间的所谓权衡。然而，尽管这些框架很流行，但令人惊讶的是，缺乏直接的实验室测试来支持它们作为广泛适用的理论支柱的效用，而这些理论支柱可以指导我们对疾病进化的理解。在本研究中，我们对这三个框架在几个广泛研究的病毒 - 宿主系统（植物病毒、真菌病毒、动物病毒和噬菌体）中的直接实验证据进行了荟萃分析。我们从28项研究中提取了60个数据集，并在不同的分析类别（如框架、病毒 - 宿主系统）中的性状之间发现了一系列关系。我们的工作表明，性状之间关系的直接证据具有高度的特异性，并且特定于宿主 - 病毒系统和理论框架。因此，研究不同分类群病毒病原体的科学家可能需要重新考虑他们对这些准则的信奉，将其作为期望、解释或预测的基础。未来的研究可以从一致的定义以及开发与证据兼容并适用于特定生物和生态背景的框架中受益。
