The story of life’s beginnings gets stranger when you look closely at viruses. These tiny entities seem to sit at the edge of biology.

Contrary to prevailing belief, an evolutionary analysis finds no evidence that most viruses with epidemic or pandemic potential that jumped from animals to people were shaped by selection in a lab or ...

Many pandemic viruses emerged naturally – but there’s one that most likely came from a lab - Research provides benchmark for distinguishing natural outbreaks from scenarios involving lab leaks ...

A new University of California San Diego study published in Cell challenges a long-standing assumption about how animal viruses become capable of sparking human epidemics and pandemics. Using a ...

Long before humans cultivated crops or sailed between continents, a group of plant viruses was already evolving among wild ...

A Rowan University team led by Chun Wu, Ph.D., received the Zuckerkandl Prize for the year’s best paper published in the ...

Learn how scientists identified genetic clues that distinguish natural viral spillovers from lab-handled viruses — and why ...

Recent research findings indicate that many of the plant pathogens affecting agriculture today originated during an earlier era than originally believed. Analysis performed by an international team of ...

High-throughput neutralisation tests could lead to a better understanding of the evolution of human influenza.

Ancient plant viruses infecting modern crops likely evolved in wild plants before the last Ice Age and later spread across continents.

Russell has a PhD in the history of medicine, violence, and colonialism. His research has explored topics including ethics, science governance, and medical involvement in violent contexts. Russell has ...