Allele-specific nonstationarity in evolution of influenza A virus surface proteins.

ABSTRACT: Influenza A virus (IAV) is a major public health problem and a pandemic threat. Its evolution is largely driven by diversifying positive selection so that relative fitness of different amino acid variants changes with time due to changes in herd immunity or genomic context, and novel amino acid variants attain fitness advantage. Here, we hypothesize that diversifying selection also has another manifestation: the fitness associated with a particular amino acid variant should decline with time since its origin, as the herd immunity adapts to it. By tracing the evolution of antigenic sites at IAV surface proteins, we show that an amino acid variant becomes progressively more likely to become replaced by another variant with time since its origin-a phenomenon we call "senescence." Senescence i

SUBMITTER: Popova AV 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6800338 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature