Long-Term Transmission of Defective RNA Viruses in Humans and Aedes Mosquitoes

In 2001, dengue virus type 1 (DENV-1) populations in humans and mosquitoes from Myanmar acquired a stop-codon mutation in the surface envelope (E) protein gene. Within a year, this stop-codon strain had spread to all individuals sampled. The presence of truncated E protein species within individual viral populations, along with a general relaxation in selective constraint, indicated that the stop-codon strain represents a defective lineage of DENV-1. We propose that such long-term transmission of defective RNA viruses in nature was achieved through complementation by coinfection of host cells with functional viruses.

[1]  Charles H. Hoke,et al.  SEROTYPE-SPECIFIC DENGUE VIRUS CIRCULATION AND DENGUE DISEASE IN BANGKOK, THAILAND FROM 1973 TO 1999 , 2003 .

[2]  A. Kondrashov.  Deleterious mutations and the evolution of sexual reproduction , 1988, Nature.

[3]  J. H. Strauss,et al.  Nonstructural proteins nsP3 and nsP4 of Ross River and O'Nyong-nyong viruses: sequence and comparison with those of other alphaviruses. , 1988, Virology.

[4]  Sudhir Kumar,et al.  MEGA2: molecular evolutionary genetics analysis software , 2001, Bioinform..

[5]  C. Wilke,et al.  Density-Dependent Selection in Vesicular Stomatitis Virus , 2004, Journal of Virology.

[6]  E. Holmes,et al.  The population genetics and evolutionary epidemiology of RNA viruses , 2004, Nature Reviews Microbiology.

[7]  R. Lenski,et al.  The Acquisition of Hypovirulence in Host‐Pathogen Systems with Three Trophic Levels , 1998, The American Naturalist.

[8]  E. Holmes,et al.  Diverse Dengue Type 2 Virus Populations Contain Recombinant and Both Parental Viruses in a Single Mosquito Host , 2003, Journal of Virology.

[9]  H J Alter,et al.  The outcome of acute hepatitis C predicted by the evolution of the viral quasispecies. , 2000, Science.

[10]  Sergei L. Kosakovsky Pond,et al.  Datamonkey: rapid detection of selective pressure on individual sites of codon alignments , 2005, Bioinform..

[11]  Susanna C. Manrubia,et al.  Evolutionary Transition toward Defective RNAs That Are Infectious by Complementation , 2004, Journal of Virology.

[12]  J. Margolick,et al.  Consistent Viral Evolutionary Changes Associated with the Progression of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Infection , 1999, Journal of Virology.

[13]  A. Han,et al.  Myanmar Dengue Outbreak Associated with Displacement of Serotypes 2, 3, and 4 by Dengue 1 , 2004, Emerging infectious diseases.

[14]  D. Maddison,et al.  MacClade 4: analysis of phy-logeny and character evolution , 2003 .

[15]  Claus O. Wilke,et al.  Co-infection Weakens Selection Against Epistatic Mutations in RNA Viruses , 2004, Genetics.

[16]  T. Williams,et al.  Defective or effective? Mutualistic interactions between virus genotypes , 2003, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences.

[17]  E. Holmes,et al.  Extinction and rapid emergence of strains of dengue 3 virus during an interepidemic period. , 2002, Virology.

[18]  Edward C. Holmes,et al.  Patterns of Intra- and Interhost Nonsynonymous Variation Reveal Strong Purifying Selection in Dengue Virus , 2003, Journal of Virology.

[19]  D. Beasley,et al.  Epitopes on the dengue 1 virus envelope protein recognized by neutralizing IgM monoclonal antibodies. , 2001, Virology.