Question

Which of the following virus is less affected?

(a) Less mutated virus

(b) Medium mutated virus

(c) High mutated virus

(d) Non-mutated virus

I got this question by my college director while I was bunking the class.

This key question is from Gene Therapy Using Viral Vectors in chapter Utilizing Genetically Engineered Organisms & Medical Applications of Bioprocess Engineering of Bioprocess Engineering

Answer 1

Right option is (c) High mutated virus

Best explanation: Viral decay acceleration (VDA) is a therapeutic strategy which increases the mutation frequency of a virus toward an error catastrophe threshold. The high mutation rate increases diversity within the viral population and facilitates survival in the face of host immune responses, depletion of target cells and antiviral therapeutics. This evolutionary advantage however comes at a considerable cost in that the vast majority of virus particles has mutated beyond a survivability threshold and is therefore non-infectious. Laboratory studies have demonstrated that therapeutics capable of increasing the mutation frequency as little as 2-fold results in collapse of the viral population. This therapeutics, termed VDA agents, accelerate the accumulation of additional mutations in the viral genome, progressively debilitating the virus which causes decay and eventual extinction of the entire viral population.