We have been battling with this ourselves of late, so thanks to Matt for posting
the query, we're interested to see how other use these terms...
We deal with plant viruses in my lab, and have chosen to define the terms, for
our own use, in an attempt to ensure that we are all using them in the same way.
We use "isolate" to mean the virus population obtained from a plant, "strain"
implies a biological context ie stable (use the term loosely) expression of
particular symptoms in a range of hosts, "variant" is used to refer to (usually
characterised) molecular entities that vary around a particular "genotype" (so
that the sequence of the variants "flutter" around that of their genotype, ie
form the quasispecies of the virus)...
Perhaps you could post a concensus at some point?
Deb
____________________Reply Separator____________________
Subject: Strain / variant
Author: <matth at biols.susx.ac.uk (Matt Hicks)>
Date: 26/02/2001 22:53
Hi People,
Just wondered what you think the difference is (if any?) between a strain
and a variant - as we have been discussing this and cannot agree....
Thanks in advance for any input,
**************************************************
Dr. Matthew R. Hicks
Research Fellow
School of Biological Sciences
University of Sussex
Falmer
BN1 9QG
UK
Tel: +44(0)1273 678923
Fax: +44(0)1273 678433
email: matth at biols.sussex.ac.uk
**************************************************
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