For some years now, there has been global concern about the creation of superbugs that are resistant to almost everything, particularly antibiotics. My question is whether something similar could happen with viruses. Do viruses adapt in a way that makes them similar to antibiotic-resistant bacteria, or does their rapid adaptation and transmission make them fundamentally different? I tried researching this topic through papers and interviews, but I couldn’t find a clear explanation.
In: Biology
To a much lesser degree.
Bacteria have evolved ways to specifically rapidly adapt to the environment. They don’t just do it through rapid breeding and random natural selection – they can create “patches” to their genome (plasmids) and share them with the colony.
Viruses are in essense very big, but dumb molecules. Their evolution relies primarily on chance and large numbers, when “assembly errors” occurs as new virus particles are built.
Latest Answers