Experiment-14.czi

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a leading cause of liver diseases. No vaccine is currently available for HCV. Live attenuated vaccines contain viruses that have been weakened so that they do not cause serious disease in people with healthy immune systems, but still induce an efficient anti-viral immune response. Understanding how viruses co-evolve with their hosts and adapt various genomic strategies to reduce their fitness has essential implications in developing new vaccines. In this study, we provide evidence of evolutionary selection for 'silent' patterns of information hidden in the HCV genetic code based on mRNA folding, using a novel genomic analysis.