Structural constraints on RNA virus evolution.

ABSTRACT: The recently discovered hepatitis G virus (HGV) or GB virus C (GBV-C) is widely distributed in human populations, and homologues such as HGV/GBV-CCPZ and GBV-A are found in a variety of different primate species. Both epidemiological and phylogenetic analyses support the hypothesis that GB viruses coevolved with their primate hosts, although their degree of sequence similarity appears incompatible with the high rate of sequence change of HGV/GBV-C over short observation periods. Comparison of complete coding sequences (8,500 bases) of different genotypes of HGV/GBV-C showed an excess of invariant synonymous sites (at 23% of all codons) compared with the frequency expected by chance (10%). To investigate the hypothesis that RNA secondary-structure formation through internal base pairing lim

SUBMITTER: Simmonds P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC112639 | biostudies-literature | 1999 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature