Abstract
The appearance for viruses that evolve to adapt to a new living niche
often reflect on viral sequence changes. Fixation of these changes may
require a long time through repeated transmission, thereby rendering a
reduced size of an effective population harboring dominant alterations
in their sequence spaces. Those approaches, with which we can closely
monitor and survey the transient changes of viral sequences over the
longer timescales, thus become a requisite to better understand the
evolution of viral pathogenicity. Molecular barcodes are a powerful and
practical molecular tool to individually label sequences, allowing for
correcting sequencing errors and identifying true mutants of interest
with a single nucleotide resolution. Molecular barcoding has also been
implemented as a useful approach to study several zoonotic viruses. In
this review, the emphasis will not only be limited to summarize current
studies focusing on viral pathogenesis and fitness; we will also propose
ideas that molecular barcodes can be used to execute surveillance of
changes of viral sequences. We believe that this review will be helpful
for the readers to better understand the rationale and the usage of
molecular barcodes and the perspectives of what molecular barcodes can
do for fighting upcoming emerging infectious diseases.