Abstract
Gonzalo Moratorio works in the field of experimental evolution of viruses. In this mSphere of Influence article, he reflects on how the papers "Virus attenuation by genome-scale changes in codon pair bias" by Coleman et al. (Science 320:1784-1787, 2008, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1155761) and "Codon usage determines the mutational robustness, evolutionary capacity, and virulence of an RNA virus" by Lauring et al. (Cell Host Microbe 12:623-632, 2012, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chom.2012.10.008) made an impact on his thinking about how to employ synthetic biology to study experimental evolution of viruses.