Structural Virology and Viral Quasispecies: Molecular Interactions, Evolution and Therapeutic Implications

The capacity of viruses to generate and maintain diverse intrahost populations, viral quasispecies, is central to immune escape, hostadaptation, drug resistance and disease outcome. Understanding this diversity at the structural and molecular level, from proteininteraction networks to epistatic constraints and Delta Delta G variation across viral interactomes, opens new avenues for rationalantiviral and immunotherapeutic design. This Research Topic therefore uses structural virology in viral quasispecies as a unifying thread linking evolutionary dynamics, molecular function, host-virus interactions and therapeutic interpretation.The goal of this Research Topic is to bring together studies that connect viral evolutionary dynamics with structural and computational biology. We aim to move beyond cataloguing mutations toward mechanistic models that explain how quasispecies composition shapesviral protein function, binding interfaces, host adaptation, immune escape, resistance and clinical outcome. Contributions should help clarify which variants are biologically meaningful by integrating sequencing, clinical or experimental data with protein modeling, molecular dynamics, docking, binding-energy analysis, interaction networks or other reproducible computational and structural approaches.We welcome original research, reviews, mini-reviews, methods, perspectives and hypothesis-driven articles addressing viral quasispecies and structural virology across human, animal or zoonotic viruses. Relevant themes include intrahost diversity; epistasis; immune and drug escape; structural modeling of viral variants; Delta Delta G, stability and interface analyses; docking, molecular dynamics and binding-energy calculations; viral and host protein interaction networks; receptor usage, tropism and antigen presentation; genotype-phenotype links; reproducible bioinformatics workflows; and rational antiviral, vaccine or immunotherapeutic design. Manuscripts should emphasize clear biological questions, rigorous methods, validation where possible and mechanistic insight. Topic editors: Daniel Ferreira De Lima Neto, Caio C. M. Freire, Gustavo H G Trossini Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/84316/structural-virology-and-viral-quasispecies-molecular-interactions-evolution-and-therapeutic-implications