Viruses are known to be the most abundant organisms on earth, yet little is known about their collective origin and evolutionary history. With exceptionally high rates of genetic mutation and mosaicism, it is not currently possible to resolve deep evolutionary histories of the known major virus groups. Metagenomics offers a potential means of establishing a more comprehensive view of viral evolution as vast amounts of new sequence data becomes available for comparative analysis.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 122. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 26 September 2026.
All research outputs
#421,708
of 32,823,022 outputs
Outputs from Biology Direct
#8
of 640 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#1,769
of 208,991 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Biology Direct
#2
of 10 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 32,823,022 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 98th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 640 research outputs from this source. They typically receive more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 9.9. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 98% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 208,991 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 10 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has scored higher than 8 of them.
