Retrovirus Phylogeny and Evolution

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Abstract
During the past few years the nucleic sequences of a large number of retroviruses have been determined, making it possible to quantify how they are related to each other and to trace their evolutionary origins. There are two factors that complicate such studies, however. First, retroviruses, like other RNA viruses, mutate at a very rapid rate (Holland et al. 1982) and as a consequence evolve very rapidly. Second, retroviruses can recombine with each other (see for example Clark and Mak 1984; reviewed in Linial and Blair 1984), raising the possibility that simple phylogenies may be confounded by mosaic genomes.