Bottleneck-mediated quasispecies restriction during spread of an RNA virus from inoculation site to brain.

ABSTRACT: The amplification of RNA viruses such as poliovirus is associated with high error rates, and the resulting diversity likely facilitates viral survival within an infected host. However, within individual tissues of infected hosts, there may be barriers to viral spread that limit genome sampling. We tested whether poliovirus population diversity was maintained during viral spread to the brain of poliovirus receptor-expressing mice. Each of four restriction enzyme site-tagged viruses was shown to be able to replicate in the mouse brain. However, when infection was initiated by i.m., i.v., or i.p. routes, only a subset of the members of the injected pool was detectable in the brain. This jackpot effect was the result of a bottleneck in viral transit from the inoculation site to the brain. The

SUBMITTER: Pfeiffer JK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1414638 | biostudies-literature | 2006 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature