A binary trait model reveals the fitness effects of HIV-1 escape from T cell responses.

ABSTRACT: Natural selection often acts on multiple traits simultaneously. For example, the virus HIV-1 faces pressure to evade host immunity while also preserving replicative fitness. While past work has studied selection during HIV-1 evolution, as in other examples where selection acts on multiple traits, it is challenging to quantitatively separate different contributions to fitness. This task is made more difficult because a single mutation can affect both immune escape and replication. Here, we develop an evolutionary model that disentangles the effects of escaping CD8⁺ T cell-mediated immunity, which we model as a binary trait, from other contributions to fitness. After validation in simulations, we applied this model to study within-host HIV-1 evolution in a clinical dataset. We obs

SUBMITTER: Gao Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11873823 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature