Variant Ventures

Variant Ventures puts you in charge of a pig farm during an active virus outbreak. Each virus in the simulation carries a short RNA sequence made of three codons: one that controls how far it can spread, one that determines the shape of its surface antigen, and one that sets how long an infection lasts. As the simulation runs, viruses mutate during replication, producing new variants with altered sequences and different traits. Hosts that recover build antibodies matched to the antigen they encountered, which shapes which variants can reinfect them and which ones find an opening to spread further. Under the right conditions, a variant may even jump from pigs to humans.

Concepts and skills covered:

-Connecting molecular-level genetic changes to population-level outcomes

-How random mutations in a nucleotide sequence produce heritable changes in viral phenotype

-The relationship between antigen shape and host receptor type as a molecular basis for host specificity

-How host immunity creates selective pressure that drives variant frequency changes over time

-Why certain mutations increase fitness in one host population but not another

-How new variants arise and diverge from a common ancestor through successive mutations

-The conditions under which a pathogen can cross species boundaries and establish in a new host

-How population density and environmental factors influence the rate and spread of an outbreak

-Reading and interpreting RNA sequences to identify which codon changes produce which trait differences

-Tracing evolutionary relationships between variants using a genealogy tree