Intra-host evolution

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In evolutionary virology (and to an extent in the wider field of pathology), Intra-host evolution represents the invisible, evolution of a virus. In contrast to inter-host evolution adaptive changes, once acquired, may be lost again if the evolutionary landscape changes. For example, a population of viruses may become resistant to an antiviral drug while the host (patient) takes it, but rapidly revert to wild-type if treatment ceases. These can include point mutations or epistatic mutations, as well as genome rearrangements to genes and other functional gene sequences such as gene acquisition, gene creation and gene deletion as well as recombination and translocation events.