Kathryn Kistler

Oct 24, 2023 | cell.com | Kathryn Kistler |Trevor Bedford

Highlights•Ongoing adaptive evolution in human endemic viruses is largely in surface proteins•Immune evasion drives continuous adaptive evolution in many endemic human viruses•Antigenic evolution occurs in several viral families•SARS-CoV-2 is accumulating protein-coding changes faster than other endemic virusesSummaryThrough antigenic evolution, viruses such as seasonal influenza evade recognition by neutralizing antibodies.

May 22, 2023 | biorxiv.org | Kathryn Kistler |Trevor Bedford

AbstractThrough antigenic evolution, viruses like seasonal influenza evade recognition by neutralizing antibodies elicited by previous infection or vaccination. This means that a person with antibodies well-tuned to an initial infection will not be protected against the same virus years later and that vaccine-mediated protection will decay. It is not fully understood which of the many endemic human viruses evolve in this fashion.