How molecular barcodes can bring us one step closer for better understanding and preventing from EIDs
As mentioned in the previous section that evolutionary bottlenecks filter out those functionally recessive viruses; the viruses that are able to pass through the selection pressure of bottlenecks usually emerge certain genotypic changes, to be more specific, nucleotide substitutions, allowing the viruses to adapt to a new host. Virus sequence changes caused by evolutionary constraints are critical for zoonotic viruses to jump across the barrier between different species; thereby owning experimental evolution models (Figure 6), with which we can track dynamic changes of viral sequences in the short term followed by testing pathogenic phenotypes associated with their genetic robustness, visualizing fitness landscapes and predicting their long-term evolutionary paths at a single-sequence level becomes irreplaceable to better understand pathogenesis of emerging viruses and to set up antiviral strategies in advance. Below we will share two of our ideas about what molecular barcodes can bring us one step closer to dissecting emerging infectious diseases.