Phenotypic and Genetic Studies of the Viral Lineage Associated with the Recent Yellow Fever Outbreak in Brazil.

ABSTRACT: Yellow fever virus (YFV) caused an outbreak in the Brazilian Southeast from 2016 to 2019, of the most significant magnitude since the 1900s. An investigation of the circulating virus revealed that most of the genomes detected in this period carried nine unique amino acid polymorphisms, with eight located in the non-structural proteins NS3 and NS5, which are pivotal for viral replication. To elucidate the effect of these amino acid changes on viral infection, we constructed viruses carrying amino acid alterations in NS3 and NS5, performed infection in different cells, and assessed their neurovirulence in BALB/c mice and infected AG129 mice. We observed that the residues that compose the YFV 2016-2019 molecular signature in the NS5 protein might have been related to an attenuated phenotype,

SUBMITTER: Furtado ND 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9412561 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature