Positive Selection Drives Preferred Segment Combinations during Influenza Virus Reassortment.

ABSTRACT: Influenza A virus (IAV) has a segmented genome that allows for the exchange of genome segments between different strains. This reassortment accelerates evolution by breaking linkage, helping IAV cross species barriers to potentially create highly virulent strains. Challenges associated with monitoring the process of reassortment in molecular detail have limited our understanding of its evolutionary implications. We applied a novel deep sequencing approach with quantitative analysis to assess the in vitro temporal evolution of genomic reassortment in IAV. The combination of H1N1 and H3N2 strains reproducibly generated a new H1N2 strain with the hemagglutinin and nucleoprotein segments originating from H1N1 and the remaining six segments from H3N2. By deep sequencing the entire viral genome,

SUBMITTER: Zeldovich KB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4462674 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature