RNA Viruses
A special issue of BioTech (ISSN 2673-6284).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2020) | Viewed by 219
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
RNA viruses are a major threat to human health. They are responsible for millions of deaths each year, and are one of the most prominent classes of emerging infectious diseases. Climate change, the growth and urbanization of the human population, and ever-denser global transportation networks are set to increase the risk of new RNA viruses becoming established in human populations, underscoring the need for intensive research efforts.
One reason why RNA viruses pose tremendous challenges for treatment and disease control is their remarkable ability to rapidly adapt to changing environmental conditions. With their short replication cycles, high mutation rates, and capacity to mix genetic material by reassortment or recombination, RNA viruses can efficiently escape from both immune surveillance and antiviral therapy. Furthermore, rapid evolutionary rates greatly complicate vaccine design.
Fortunately, the past decade has seen significant progress in understanding RNA viruses, thanks to advances in high-throughput sequencing, screening, imaging, and proteomics. These advances are beginning to reveal insights into virus population dynamics and evolution at the molecular level, detailed mechanisms of viral replication and viral–host interactions, and pathways of immune evasion and drug resistance. Together, these findings promise to revolutionize how we combat RNA viruses through the design of novel treatment and control strategies, antiviral agents, and universal vaccines.
In this Special Issue, we invite the submission of original research and review articles that showcase how high-throughput technologies are being used to revolutionize our understanding of RNA virus biology.
Dr. Redmond Smyth
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- virus
- RNA
- evolution
- replication
- infection
- immunity
- host/pathogen
- structure/function
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