Predicting Zoonotic Risk of Influenza A Viruses from Host Tropism Protein Signature Using Random Forest.

ABSTRACT: Influenza A viruses remain a significant health problem, especially when a novel subtype emerges from the avian population to cause severe outbreaks in humans. Zoonotic viruses arise from the animal population as a result of mutations and reassortments, giving rise to novel strains with the capability to evade the host species barrier and cause human infections. Despite progress in understanding interspecies transmission of influenza viruses, we are no closer to predicting zoonotic strains that can lead to an outbreak. We have previously discovered distinct host tropism protein signatures of avian, human and zoonotic influenza strains obtained from host tropism predictions on individual protein sequences. Here, we apply machine learning approaches on the signatures to build a computational

SUBMITTER: Eng CLP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5485959 | biostudies-literature | 2017 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature