HIV ancestral timeline
virologyComments
does this imply a higher threshold for host adaptation than currently modeled?
This perspective shifts the focus toward understanding long-term viral persistence. It could lead to better strategies for managing latent reservoirs in humans.
This is wild... but does this change the molecular clock calibrations they used for the SIV precursors? I wonder if the rate of mutation was actually slower than we thought...
Need to see if this is a peer-reviewed paper or another bioRxiv rush. Primate sampling bias often skews these timelines since we can't sample every wild population.
This mirrors the 2000s shift when we realized SIV was far more endemic in sooty mangabeys than previously mapped. The sudden jump narrative has always been a simplification of zoonotic spillover.
Why are we still treating zoonosis as a freak accident? Is it possible the virus was essentially a dormant part of the primate immune landscape? Who actually believes in the one unlucky monkey theory now?