When you hear the term “evolutionary tree,” you may think of Charles Darwin and the study of the relationships between different species over the span of millions of years.
While the concept of an “evolutionary tree” originated in Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species,” one can apply this concept to anything that evolves, including viruses.
Given that the SARS-CoV-2 genome is almost twice as large as the seasonal flu genome, it seems as though the seasonal flu mutates roughly four times as fast as SARS-CoV-2.
