Preadaptation of pandemic GII.4 noroviruses in unsampled virus reservoirs years before emergence.

ABSTRACT: The control of re-occurring pandemic pathogens requires understanding the origins of new pandemic variants and the factors that drive their global spread. This is especially important for GII.4 norovirus, where vaccines under development offer promise to prevent hundreds of millions of annual gastroenteritis cases. Previous studies have hypothesized that new GII.4 pandemic viruses arise when previously circulating pandemic or pre-pandemic variants undergo substitutions in antigenic regions that enable evasion of host population immunity, as described by conventional models of antigenic drift. In contrast, we show here that the acquisition of new genetic and antigenic characteristics cannot be the proximal driver of new pandemics. Pandemic GII.4 viruses diversify and spread over wide geogra

SUBMITTER: Ruis C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7751145 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature