• FluTrackers.com Inc. does not provide medical advice. Information on this web site is collected from various internet resources, and the FluTrackers board of directors makes no warranty to the safety, efficacy, correctness or completeness of the information posted on this site by any author or poster. The information collated here is for instructional and/or discussion purposes only and is NOT intended to diagnose or treat any disease, illness, or other medical condition. Every individual reader or poster should seek advice from their personal physician/healthcare practitioner before considering or using any interventions that are discussed on this website. By continuing to access this website you agree to consult your personal physican before using any interventions posted on this website, and you agree to hold harmless FluTrackers.com Inc., the board of directors, the members, and all authors and posters for any effects from use of any medication, supplement, vitamin or other substance, device, intervention, etc. mentioned in posts on this website, or other internet venues referenced in posts on this website.
  • We are not asking for any donations. Do not donate to any entity who says they are raising funds for us.

H1N1 seasonal influenza virus evolutionary rate changed over time

tetano

Editor, Senior Moderator
Virus Res. 2018 Mar 30. pii: S0168-1702(17)30881-X. doi: 10.1016/j.virusres.2018.03.020. [Epub ahead of print]
[h=1]H1N1 seasonal influenza virus evolutionary rate changed over time.[/h] Suptawiwat O[SUP]1[/SUP], Kongchanagul A[SUP]2[/SUP], Boonarkart C[SUP]3[/SUP], Auewarakul P[SUP]3[/SUP].
[h=3]Author information[/h]

[h=3]Abstract[/h] It was previously shown that the seasonal H1N1 influenza virus antigenic drift occurred at a slower rate than the seasonal H3N2 virus during the first decade of the 21 t h century. It was hypothesized that the slower antigenic evolution led to a decrease in average ages of infection, which in turn resulted in lower level of global viral circulation. It is unclear what caused the difference between the two viruses, but a plausible explanation may be related to the fact that the H1N1 virus had been in human population for much longer than the H3N2 virus. This would suggest that H1N1 antigenic drift in an earlier period may have been different from a more recent period. To test this hypothesis, we analyzed seasonal H1N1 influenza sequences during various time periods. In comparison to more recent H1N1 virus, the older H1N1 virus during the first half of the 20 t h century showed evidences of higher nonsynnonymous/synonymous ration (dN/dS) in its hemagglutinin (HA) gene. We compared amino acid sequence changes in the HA epitopes for each outbreak season and found that there were less changes in later years. Amino acid sequence diversity in the epitopes as measured by sequence entropy became smaller for each passing decade. These suggest that there might be some limit to the antigenic drift. The longer an influenza virus has drifted in human population, the less flexibility it may become. With less flexibility to adapt and escape the host immunity, the virus may have to rely more on younger na?ve population.


[h=4]KEYWORDS:[/h] H1N1; antigenic drift; evolution; influenza virus; sequence entropy

PMID: 29608996 DOI: 10.1016/j.virusres.2018.03.020
 
Back
Top Bottom