Virus Discovery: Innovative Approaches to Detection and Characterization of Emerging Viruses
A special issue of Viruses (ISSN 1999-4915). This special issue belongs to the section "General Virology".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 August 2026
Special Issue Editor
Interests: plant and fungal viruses; wild plant viruses; spillover; virus evolution
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Wildlife, in all its forms, acts as a reservoir for staggering numbers of viruses, the vast majority of which are undescribed. Many viruses have narrow host ranges and will probably never emerge to damage other species. However, the appearance of SARS-CoV-2 in 2019 reminds us that very damaging viruses do emerge from wild sources to infect people, our precious food sources, and other wild systems. The presence of some emerging viruses is clear from the obvious symptoms they induce in new hosts, while the quiet circulation of cryptic viruses often goes undetected.
Viral emergence occurs at human–animal interfaces, as well as cultivated crop interfaces with wild domesticated plants, and is driven by the global trade in fresh food, exchange of germplasms, mass movement of people, climate change, etcetera.
High-throughput sequencing, AI-assisted sequence analyses, new advances in CRISPR and PCR-based diagnostics, and portable diagnostics platforms are transforming the landscape of virus discovery.
This Special Issue, “Virus Discovery: Innovative Approaches to Detection and Characterization of Emerging Viruses”, aims to highlight new diagnostic technologies, explore trends in virus emergence and evolution, and present expert perspectives and future prospects.
We invite virologists and scientists from associated disciplines to contribute to this Special Issue. We will consider a broad range of perspectives.
Dr. Steve Wylie
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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Viruses is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 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 detection
- virus assay
- emerging viruses
- virus threats
- cryptic viruses
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